Bodyless Presence: Reconsidering the Minimal Self in Immersive Video

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.

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Abstract

Immersive video, namely 180-degree and 360-degree video designed to be viewed through head-mounted displays, constitutes an important boundary case between interactive VR and conventional two-dimensional video viewing for reconsidering self-experience in XR. In immersive video, the user can select the direction of the viewpoint through head rotation, while being unable to actively change the recorded environment through walking, approaching, grasping, or manipulating. In many cases, no explicit body or avatar corresponding to the user is provided. This paper reinterprets presence in immersive video not as bodily extension or body ownership of an avatar, but as a form of self-experience in which self-location becomes relatively dominant under conditions of reduced body schema availability. This paper calls this condition a self-location-dominant state. In this state, viewpoint-directed agency is retained, whereas environment-directed agency and body ownership are constrained. Nevertheless, events such as viewpoint motion, impact, contact, and direct address may be experienced not merely as changes within an image, but as events concerning the viewpoint position at which the self is located. This paper examines this structure by connecting research on presence, the sense of embodiment, bodily self-consciousness, and the minimal self. The minimal self in immersive video is thereby redescribed not primarily in terms of agency or ownership, but in terms of viewpoint-based self-location established under conditions in which the contribution of the body schema is reduced. This perspective provides a basis for theorising self-experience in non-interactive immersive media and for reconsidering the relation between body, viewpoint, and presence in XR.