There's something about living your life in 3 rd person that is both deeply unsettling and terribly profound. You've got to try it.
Box Man is this project we've been working on for the last few weeks, but the seed really germinated over a year ago in my apartment. I'll get into the origin story later though. Box Man — at its core — is an out of body experience. With the help of a Google Cardboard head mounted display, you get to experience your life from outside of your body. Ideally, you have a friend act as Camera Guy. He uses one mobile device (eg a tablet) to record video of you, which is then streamed in real time to the Cardboard on your face. Have you ever really seen the way you look? Whenever you look in a mirror, don't you kind of adjust your posture, the tilt of your neck, etc — you are never really looking at what candid beyond the mirror you actually looks like. One place where you can get that experience is from watching video, or looking at yourself on the overhead camera and TVas you walk into Target. Box Man is different from watching a video of you because it is in real time. It is different from looking at the TV overhead because the screen you are looking at is always smack-dab in front of your face. You don't have to keep your head up as you watch yourself dance around, freeing up your natural motion and further exposing your self to yourself. Before I go on, let's just get the box out of the way. Originally, Box Man was supposed to wear a body-length box. We quickly realized though, that seeing your arms and torso and legs move around is what really is so profoundly bizarre. So we scrapped the long box and opted for a box that just goes over your head. You look strange enough walking around with an HMD, why not put a box over it? Why be you when you can be Box Man? One benefit of this is that it conceals what is really going on under the hood. Passersby will be much more confused by Box Man than by you with a hat on and weird contraption over your face. And provoking confusion is central to the mission of Box Man. Seeing yourself from over your shoulder is itself an incredibly confusing kinesthetic experience. Your sense of propioception goes completely out the window and you have to re-learn how to control your body. Learning the controls is the first surreally fun part of Box Man. Watching yourself then do pretty much anything is really quite something. We're not totally sure what that thing is, but it seems important.
When you are Box Man, on some level it feels like you are playing a video game where you have complete control over the protagonist's body. Your brain struggles to understand where you are located in space. If Camera Guy is still, you sometimes feel like you are just sitting in a chair watching the whole thing transpire. But then your vestibular sense kicks your brain back into your body and you find yourself disoriented and lost. I have been Box Man for dozens of minutes so far, and I do think that I am getting better at living in 3 rd person. The Box Man 3 rd person concept opens up some crazy doors about how a life can be lived. You could literally live your life in 3 rd person. Sure talking would be hard with a box on your head, but fuck the box if you don't want it. Imagine watching yourself walking around the streets of New York while you walk around the streets of New York. Imagine yourself being hit by a taxi. If the HMD holds, that would be one of the most insane experiences I can think of. Please don't do that. But just think about it. Crazy, right?
There are so many other potential ways to use the Box Man concept. One idea that came to mind instantly as I first watched myself was — relating to sports — the ability to watch your technique (eg your motion as you swing a tennis racquet or baseball bat, or, in volleyball, your approach leading up to a spike). There really is potential here for Box Man (the whole concept) to make a meaningful difference in how athletes train.
Sometime soon, Camera Guy should be extended into the air. He should be a quadrotor drone controlled by Box Man's head or arm motions — or maybe just always align him/itself to an isometric view of Box Man from behind. Other axonometric projections should obviously also be explored.
We have chosen not to ever use the terrible pun involving an out of the box experience, and we advise you to do the same.
Anyways, there you have it (hopefully). Box Man is a challenge to evolution's drive to center the self around itself. Why must I be inside my head? We are not proposing that life could be more easily lived from a distance, but it certainly could be lived.
David Baker