# Altered Xperience Project

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Generated: 2026-06-13
Description: The Altered Xperience Project is a CIRCE-led citizen-science survey for anonymous altered-state reports, with multilingual questionnaires, feedback, scoring, exports, and collaborator workflow.
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Citizen-science altered-state survey

# Altered Xperience Project

 The Altered Xperience Project (AXP) is a CIRCE-led citizen-science survey for
 anonymous reports of altered states of consciousness, including substance-based
 and non-substance-based experiences. The public survey combines multilingual
 questionnaires, feedback, privacy boundaries, scoring, research exports, and
 collaborator workflow. CIRCE leads the scientific project; Mesmer Prism
 contributes the web infrastructure and collaborator tooling.

 [Live AXP survey](https://alteredxproject.com/)
 [Access guide](https://mesmerprism.com/axp-mvp-survey-guide/)
 [CIRCE](https://circe-science.com/)
 [Back to work](https://mesmerprism.com/#work)

 Direction

## What the system adds

 AXP turns altered-state research into a running citizen-science survey. Public
 participation, questionnaire design, data hygiene, and open-science
 distribution have to work together in the same web system.

 The running app is a Shiny survey pipeline with Google Sheets questionnaire
 definitions, language-specific survey blocks, MariaDB persistence, canonical
 ASC scoring, peer-comparison feedback, data-quality metadata, and export
 scripts for redacted public exports and restricted research exports. The access
 guide explains survey links, questionnaire edits, data
 examples, peer-plot tuning, and the contracts that keep edits safe.

 AXP extends the same systems thinking behind Viscereality and Rusty XR into
 browser-based research infrastructure: consent-facing flow, participant
 experience, reproducible definitions, redacted exports, and collaborator
 documentation.

### Current system

- Multilingual Shiny survey flow for altered-state reports

- Questionnaire definitions loaded from Google Sheets or local CSV sources

- ASC scoring, feedback screens, and peer-comparison plotting

- MariaDB persistence and one-fact-per-key data tables

- Redacted public exports, restricted full exports, and OSF-ready data packages

- Collaborator-facing access guide, diagrams, data examples, and plot lab

### Connected projects

- [Brain Candy](https://mesmerprism.com/projects/brain-candy.html) for non-pharmacological state-shift design and measurement context

- [Prophantasia](https://mesmerprism.com/projects/prophantasia.html) for citizen-science platform thinking around imagery variation

- [Phenomenological Control](https://mesmerprism.com/projects/phenomenological-control.html) for suggestion, imagery, and subjective-report discipline

- [Viscereality](https://mesmerprism.com/projects/viscereality.html) for live study systems and participant-facing XR research flow

 Scope

## Role and system scope

 CIRCE leads the scientific project and remains the scientific source of
 record. Mesmer Prism translates research requirements into working survey,
 data, feedback, and documentation systems.

 AXP collects subjective reports. That makes privacy, anonymity, stable
 terminology, and export boundaries central design concerns. The tooling
 therefore treats participant-facing experience, researcher-facing data shape,
 and collaborator documentation as one system instead of separate afterthoughts.

 AXP is an open-science and citizen-science
 infrastructure project for studying altered-state reports; it is not a clinical
 service, a harm-reduction authority, or a safety endorsement for any
 consciousness-modifying technique.

### System focus

- Citizen-science participation rather than closed internal research

- Web development as part of research method

- Open-science export paths and collaborator documentation

- Clear distinction between CIRCE's scientific leadership and Mesmer Prism's web-system contribution

 References

## Current references

 These links ground the public description of AXP and the surrounding
 altered-state measurement infrastructure.

### Project links

- CIRCE. "[Altered Xperience Project](https://alteredxproject.com/)." Live AXP survey page.

- CIRCE. "[Collaboration for Interdisciplinary Research on Conscious Experience](https://circe-science.com/)." Public CIRCE site.

- Mesmer Prism. "[AXP Access Guide](https://mesmerprism.com/axp-mvp-survey-guide/)." Public collaborator guide.

### Measurement context

- CIRCE e.V. "[Collection of Altered-State Rating Scales and Questionnaires](https://circe-e-v.github.io/CAR/index.html)." Public questionnaire collection.

- Costines and Schmidt. "[Exploring Altered States of Consciousness: A Pilot Study of Phenomenomics Using Citizen Science](https://www.cbs.mpg.de/2107561/a02_costines.pdf)." Poster describing the earlier citizen-science pilot.