Digital psychedelics are useful stress-management tools that can deliver peak experiences in a pandemic-ridden timeline.
How have you managed your stress during the COVID-19 pandemic? Personally, I have given a lot of thought to my own relationship with the concept of time, and more importantly, how I go about “spending” it accordingly.
Variations of this question has traveled far and wide on every social media platform throughout state-wide shutdowns around the world; if we were to play some form of Zoom Bingo, our virtual scorecards would quickly fill in the blocks with the stress-related statements. Like many COVID-19 isolators, I have spent a healthy amount of my quarantine time playing video games like Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Once I reached the 80 hour playtime mark in one of these games within a 16-day time period, I decided it was time for me to re-calibrate how I allocated my time accordingly. After a quick internet search for a novel experience, I came across a genre of video games designed to deliver abstract, meditative-like experiences: technodelics.
What is a technodelic?
A technodelic is simply what it sounds like…a digital psychedelic. Depending on the application, these immersive tools can facilitate an altered state of mind akin to what one may experience with entheogens (e.g. psilocybin, LSD). As a moderate game consumer, I was genuinely surprised to just learn about technodelics in 2020 when game developers have been synthesizing such technologies for many years.
The first technodelic I came across is a creation of Robin Arnott, an entrepreneurial game designer who has spoken at great lengths about technodelics (listen to him here, here, and here). For the last eight years, he worked as the lead designer on a PC and VR-supported technodelic called SoundSelf. This application creates mystical experiences by establishing an audio-visual feedback loop between the user’s voice inputs, such as controlled breathing, and the audio-responsive output of abstract, self-actualized imagery. In addition to SoundSelf, Robin founded Andromeda Entertainment, a publishing label dedicated to intersecting transcendence into mainstream culture through video games.
Once I was properly introduced to the idea of a technodelic via SoundSelf, I continued to explore this rabbit hole for other examples that could be regularly used as a stress management tool. Here is a list of technodelic applications I will (try to) play with so that I can share these experiences with you here.
- Cosmic Sugar is a creative VR series where the user engages with high-resolution light particles in 3D. In other words, imagine being able to manipulate cosmic light particles with your movements in a way that invokes a state of flow. This application was designed and created by David Lobser @ Object Normal.
- Breathscape is an iOS app designed to generate music from your breathing. By synthesizing an immersive audio experience in real-time, deep meditative states can be reached with the help of this technology.
- Microdose VR is another creative tool that equip users with hundreds of pattern brushes supported by six degrees of freedom. This interactive platform is intended to facilitate creative flow states with psychedelic visuals that manifest out of the user’s creative process.
As this genre of technology continues to grow, I am particularly curious to see if scholars take interest in measuring the efficacy of technodelics as a useful stress-management tool. In the meantime, I now have a few new apps that can help me manage the stress induced by Tom Nook’s predatory hustle as a virtual tax man.