ABSTRACT

Like being in love, many of us have experienced something akin to rapture when contemplating particular works of art. This experience prompts the writing of this chapter, which analyzes some of the components that enable rapt attention. Increasingly concerned with first-person accounts of embodiment, spatiality and temporality, cognitive neuroscience, has provided new impetus for artists developing ways to instantiate and share phenomenological states. The reverse is also true: some contemporary art suggests new approaches for neuroscientists to explore such subjects as autoscopic or out-of-body phenomena, synchronization of sensations, sensory substitution, and uncertainties in sight and memory. The uses of biofeedback, new human-computer interfaces, and virtual reality setups, along with video and performance, have contributed to these recent developments. Both conventional and new art forms enable participants to experience common and uncommon phenomena along with providing an opportunity to ponder how perception is enacted. This chapter explores why the embodied attentional system and its constraints are important components of being “enraptured.”