VR models of death and psychedelics: an aesthetic paradigm for design beyond day-to-day phenomenology
Frontiers in Virtual Reality January 29, 2024 David R. Glowacki 11 citations
Near-death experiences (NDEs) and psychedelic drug experiences (YDEs) dissolve ordinary spatio-temporal distinctions and foster a sense of unity, while also reducing death-related anxiety. Virtual reality experiences (VREs) designed with a 'numadelic' aesthetic—representing bodies as light energy rather than material objects—can produce psychometric results comparable to YDEs. This article traces the numadelic aesthetic's origins to NDE phenomenology and explains its effects through a theoretical framework grounded in predictive coding and physics. A two-axis schematic distinguishes typical VREs (high structural specificity and symbolic rigidity, which limit imaginative possibility) from numadelic aesthetics (low on both axes, which open a high-entropy space for endogenous insight). This framework accounts for prior experimental findings and suggests tests for modeling NDEs to address death anxiety.