Bodyless Presence: Reconsidering the Minimal Self in Immersive Video
arXiv Preprint Archive May 5, 2026 Koichi Toida
Immersive video—180-degree and 360-degree video viewed through head-mounted displays—offers a boundary case between interactive virtual reality and conventional video. Users can select viewpoint direction by head rotation but cannot change the environment through walking or manipulation, and often no avatar is provided. Presence in such media is reinterpreted not as bodily extension or avatar ownership, but as a self-location-dominant state: viewpoint-directed agency is retained while environment-directed agency and body ownership are constrained. Events like viewpoint motion or impact are experienced as concerning the self's location. This analysis draws on research on presence, embodiment, bodily self-consciousness, and the minimal self, redescribing the minimal self in terms of viewpoint-based self-location under reduced body schema availability.