Artist Mark Farid has launched a Kickstarter campaign today that looks to raise the $234,500 in required funding which will allow Farid to live a virtual life for 28 days.
The project, which is entitled Seeing-I, will have Farid put on a virtual reality headset with noise-canceling headphones for a length of 28 days. Farid will be living in a gallery while streaming into the headset the daily experiences of another person.
"Seeing-I is a social-artistic experiment that questions how much of the individual is an inherent personality and how large a portion of the individual is a cultural identity," the project's Kickstarter page states, adding that Farid's immersion into the life of another individual will also be taking a look at the implications of using such digital technology.
Farid will be inserting himself into another person that he refers to as "The Other," who will be equipped with his own set of glasses with dual cameras and dual binaural microphones. Through the equipment, Farid will see and hear whatever The Other sees and hears.
The idea is that Farid will simultaneously do whatever The Other does. Farid will be eating when The Other sits down to eat. He will sleep when The Other lies down to sleep.
Farid will have his goggles and earphones the whole time. However, during an hour while The Other is sleeping, the audience watching him in the gallery will be asked to leave as Farid will be speaking with a psychologist through his headphones. While the one-hour session will act as an audio diary for Farid's thoughts, the session will also allow for the psychologist to check the mental health of Farid as the project goes on.
As for who The Other is, the person is yet to be determined. Anybody can apply to be The Other, or can nominate anyone for the job. The Other will be handpicked by the project psychologist, a neuroscientist and the director of the gallery.
The only details that Farid wants for The Other is a heterosexual male that is in a relationship.
Once the project has concluded, the findings will be processed into a documentary that will discuss the project through several angles such as psychology, neuroscience and art.
"Whatever the result, the documentary will be ground-breaking and give rise to a raft of new hypotheses and methodologies for social psychology to explore more systematically and in larger samples," said Simon Baron-Cohen, a professor of psychology and cognitive neuroscience at Cambridge University.
A test run for the Seeing-I project was carried out last year in a gallery in London. Named Alone Together, the 24-hour project had Farid watch a recorded video of the day of another person who was going through relatively tedious motions of life.
