Carolina English

This project’s overall goal is to understand two phenomenal experiences:

1. People’s agency in forming mental representations of the world
2. People’s agency in responding to these representations.

I explored people’s control over the world built in their own minds. I studied this by examining blind-sight cases. In these cases, patients are not consciously aware of their surrounding objects, but can still respond to them. In other words, they cannot to use their “what” pathway, but are able to utilize their “where/how” pathway. I used these studies and optical illusions to simulate a blind-sight patient’s experience.

I used lazer lights and mist to outline shapes in a self-made hallway. The shapes were meant to be “filled in” by the mind. I imagined that people would react to these shapes and feel the need to move around them – putting the two phenomenal experiences to the test.

For

University of Pennsylvania

Date

Spring 2016