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ASSC Satellite Event on Non-Ordinary States of Consciousness

A compact post-ASSC 2025 workshop-retreat for researchers working across altered states, virtual reality, neurophenomenology, computational phenomenology, and the formal modeling of experience. The event is designed for a small group of roughly 35 participants, with talks, demonstrations, collaborative sessions, and room for new research partnerships.

Date

10-14 July 2025

Place

Vrachos Villas, Agia Paraskevi / Ligres, Crete

Partner

Qualia Research Institute

Format

Workshop retreat after ASSC 2025 in Greece

The Qualia Research Institute is a co-organizational and funding partner for the retreat, supporting the QRI track on formal state-space models, valence, and computational approaches to non-ordinary conscious experience.

Four Themes

Measuring Subjective Effects

Open-science methods, validated questionnaires, psychometrics, and state-space mapping for comparing altered-state reports without flattening phenomenological detail.

Virtual Reality Approaches

VR, bioresponsive systems, hallucination simulations, and immersive tools for eliciting, modeling, and studying changes in self-representation and perception.

Lived Experience

Micro-phenomenology, contemplative practice, sound and art sessions, and first-person methods that make subjective structure part of the research process.

Formal State Spaces

QRI-led work on computational phenomenology, valence, coupling dynamics, visual-state classifications, and mathematical models of non-ordinary experience.

Program by Day

Sessions are grouped by day so the program can be scanned quickly. Select a speaker card to expand the biography and session context.

Thursday, July 10, 2025

Opening / music Listen, Gather, Begin Amiruz and Stratos Bichakis

Arrival gathering beneath the night sky, with music beginning around 19:00.

Stratos Bichakis is a transdisciplinary artist whose installations and performances use sound, light, motion, and language to transform sensory experience. For the retreat, his musical role grounds the opening in shared listening rather than formal presentation.

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Friday, July 11, 2025

Lived experience Morning Glory Matthias "Mathiós" Braeunig

Morning meditation and yoga as a daily experiential anchor.

Matthias Braeunig is an independent research scientist with a physics background, long experience in medical statistics, data science, and R programming, and decades of contemplative practice in yoga and Tibetan Buddhist meditation.

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Track 1 / measurement keynote Systematic Quantification of Altered States Timo Torsten Schmidt

Achievements and challenges in systematic altered-state measurement.

Timo Torsten Schmidt is a neuroscientist at Freie Universität Berlin working on experimental consciousness research, mental imagery, working memory, and altered states. He co-founded CIRCE and founded the Altered States Database to improve open reference datasets.

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Track 1 / micro-phenomenology Refining the Outer Realms James Sanders

Micro-phenomenology and non-ordinary states, including work from DMT research.

James W. Sanders is a psychologist, cognitive neuroscientist, and phenomenologist at Imperial College London's Centre for Psychedelic Research. His work uses micro-phenomenological interviewing to study DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, and advanced meditation.

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Track 1 / state-space mapping A Dissimilarity-Based Bottom-Up Approach for State-Space Mapping Paweł Motyka

Subjective dissimilarity ratings as a route into bottom-up altered-state maps.

Paweł Motyka is a psychology researcher affiliated with the Institute of Psychology at the Polish Academy of Sciences. His work addresses consciousness, multisensory integration, time perception, interoception, and VR-based models of altered states.

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Track 1 / methods keynote Altered States Lab Methods Vince Polito

Psychometric, experimental, and clinical methods for altered-state research.

Vince Polito is a Senior Lecturer at Macquarie University whose research spans hypnosis, flow, meditation, yoga, chanting, VR, religious rituals, psychosis, and psychedelic microdosing. He leads large-scale psychedelic and microdosing studies in Australia.

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Track 2 / VR Hallucination Machine 2.0 Keisuke Suzuki

New directions for studying visual hallucinations using VR technology.

Keisuke Suzuki is a cognitive scientist specializing in embodied cognition, conscious presence, and VR-based studies of self-consciousness. His research links artificial life, bodily self-representation, and experimental manipulation of mental states.

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Track 2 / VR Sensory-Driven Altered States and New Hallucination Machine Studies Paweł Motyka

Stereoscopic, gaze-coupled, and physiology-linked variants of Hallucination Machine studies.

Motyka's work combines multisensory integration, bodily processes, and altered states. In this session he extends the measurement theme into sensory VR induction and peripheral physiology.

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Track 2 / bioresponsive VR Viscereality: Bio-responsive VR System George Fejer

Breath-based interactions with coupled oscillator dynamics in VR.

George Fejer is a PhD candidate in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Konstanz and an ALIUS coordinator. His research uses bioresponsive VR to study breathwork-induced changes in consciousness and peripersonal space.

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Track 2 / VR treatment design VR and Psychoplastogens Hector Taylor

Possible VR-augmented treatments for chronic conditions.

Hector Taylor is a dual PhD candidate in Neuroscience and Psychology at the Psychiatric University Hospital of Zurich. His work integrates VR embodiment simulation, psychedelics, neurophenomenology, and fNIRS for chronic pain research.

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Track 2 / live systems Goofi-Pipe Demo Antoine Bellemare and Philipp Thölke

An accessible biofeedback framework for VR and visual applications.

Antoine Bellemare is an artist and postdoctoral researcher working across neuroscience, digital arts, poetry, and interactive biosignal installations. Philipp Thölke develops real-time neurotechnology and computational tools, including goofi-pipe for EEG and biofeedback prototyping.

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Track 2 / visual replications Psychedelic Replications Raimonds Jermaks / Symmetric Vision

Approaches to modeling and presenting psychedelic visual phenomena.

Raimonds Jermaks, known as Symmetric Vision, is a multidisciplinary artist whose work merges digital art, altered-state research, live projection, and immersive visual storytelling. He is known for detailed visual replications and psychedelic cryptography experiments.

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Track 2 / art and uncertainty Towards Uncertainty and CONFABULATION Yutaka Makino

A talk followed by a pool-based sound performance for four speakers.

Yutaka Makino is an artist and researcher based in Berlin and Fukuoka. Drawing from psychiatry, psychoacoustics, neuroscience, linguistics, and history of science, he builds performances and installations that make perceptual processes tangible.

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Cultural performance Stratoscapes Stratos Bichakis

Ambient performance with Cretan Bulgari.

Bichakis' performance practice explores emotional and transcendent possibilities of sound and light. The retreat program uses these artistic sessions as part of its lived-experience structure, not merely as evening entertainment.

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Saturday, July 12, 2025

Lived experience Morning Glory Matthias "Mathiós" Braeunig

Morning meditation and yoga.

The recurring morning format keeps contemplative practice visible inside the event structure, so discussions of non-ordinary states remain tethered to first-person methods.

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Track 4 / QRI keynote Parametrizing Psychedelic States with Dynamic Systems and Coupling Dynamics Andrés Gómez Emilsson

Image-based and visual state classifications as an entry into formal modeling.

Andrés Gómez Emilsson is Director of Research at the Qualia Research Institute. His work combines neuroscience, philosophy, artificial intelligence, qualia mapping, valence, psychedelic phenomenology, and topological models of consciousness.

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Track 4 / computational phenomenology On the Computational Properties of DMT-Altered Consciousness June Russell

Computational frameworks for DMT-induced altered states.

June Russell contributes to the QRI-oriented formal modeling strand of the retreat, connecting psychedelic phenomenology with computational descriptions of altered conscious dynamics.

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Track 2 / visual phenomenology Towards a Big-Data Quantitative Phenomenology of Visual Hallucinations Trevor Hewitt

Training participants to create images of stroboscopically induced hallucinations.

Trevor Hewitt is a PhD researcher at the Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science whose work connects visual phenomenology, hallucination reports, and quantitative analysis of experience.

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Parallel session A Phenomenological Playground Andrés, Taru, Till, Philipp, and Antoine

Interactive live coding, visuals, goofi-pipe, and audience participation.

This collaborative session brings together QRI researchers, computational artists, and neurotechnology builders. Taru Hirvonen develops mathematical models and visualizations of conscious dynamics; Till Holzapfel works at the intersection of altered states, embodiment, and immersive technology.

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Parallel session B FOLDINGS Yutaka Makino

An art project distorting spatial perception through custom goggles and audio manipulation.

In FOLDINGS, visitors experience ordinary surroundings through layered visual and auditory distortions. The session uses adaptation and cross-modal delay to make the construction of perception directly experientially available.

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Sunday, July 13, 2025

Lived experience Morning Glory Matthias "Mathiós" Braeunig

Morning meditation and yoga.

The final Morning Glory session closes the contemplative thread of the retreat before the Sunday sequence of tulpamancy, debate, meditation, and psychedelic psychodynamics.

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Special keynote Tulpamancy Michael Lifshitz

The phenomenon of tulpamancy and its implications for consciousness research.

Michael Lifshitz is Assistant Professor in Social and Transcultural Psychiatry at McGill University and co-director of the Psychedelics and Contemplation Lab. His research examines how culture shapes spiritual experience and agency.

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Debate The Great Tulpa Consciousness Debate June Russell, Andrés Gómez Emilsson, Till Holzapfel, and Marc Antonio

A structured debate on tulpa consciousness and models of awareness.

Marc Antonio is an AI researcher and philosopher in Amsterdam interested in formal logic, transcendental phenomenology, mechanistic interpretability, qualia space, social space, and neurophenomenology. The panel links these questions with QRI and VR perspectives.

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Meditation research What Kind of Suffering Does Meditation Reduce? Vismay Agrawal

A systematic account of how meditation may dismantle mechanisms that create suffering.

Vismay Agrawal is a PhD researcher at the Monash Centre for Consciousness and Contemplative Studies. His interests include mental suffering, advanced meditation, phenomenology, active inference, and contemplative practice.

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Super special keynote Introduction to the Psychodynamics of the Psychedelic Experience Tobias Buchborn

Psychodynamic frameworks for interpreting psychedelic experiences.

Tobias Buchborn holds a PhD in Neurobiology and has studied psychedelic tolerance, optogenetic voltage imaging, chemogenetics, and fiber photometry. His current work examines therapeutic mechanisms in psychedelic research.

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