Sometimes, especially when it's raining or even just drizzling, I feel torn - which do I prefer - the shoulds (you should go outdoors and experience the beauty of nature) or the wants (the online engagement and possible seduction).
Sitting on the couch, surfing the world, seems such a passive experience. Looking at the way individuals engage with online religious experiences and religious services also seems to be similar. There's engagement certainly, but embodiment? Religious leaders can beam their message out across the globe, but the practitioners and the leader themselves are often sitting watching their computer screens. The action is taking place in their minds and their imagination.
Sitting on the couch, surfing the world, seems such a passive experience. Looking at the way individuals engage with online religious experiences and religious services also seems to be similar. There's engagement certainly, but embodiment? Religious leaders can beam their message out across the globe, but the practitioners and the leader themselves are often sitting watching their computer screens. The action is taking place in their minds and their imagination.
Certainly the senses of sight and hearing are being activated but, according to Glenn Young (2004: 104), 'the only way I found myself able to connect with this [Catholic] ritual in any tangible way was through the relation of what I was viewing to my own previous experiences as a participant in this liturgy.' The experience is embodied, he says, but only through the bodymind remembering.
In his article, Religion and praying online, Young (2004:101) cites Brenda Brasher (2001:42) as observing that cyberspace 'stimulates the imagination but ignores the rest of the body...[and] that sucks attention away from the immediate surroundings in which most traditional religious lift occurs.'
So the quandary remains - why the intense engagement if the 'real' body is left only as a passive participant in the virtual sacred? To help me answer, or at least reflect on the question, I go webwalking and find T.L. Taylor (2002:42) explaining that:
'The body through which presence is being constructed is not simply the corporeal one, but the digital as well. In multi-user worlds it is not just through the inclusion of a representation of self that presence is built. It is instead through the use of a body as material in the dynamic performance of identity and social life that users come to be “made real” – that they come to experience immersion.'
Taylor refers specifically to online avatars, imaginative creations of alter-egos for participation in the virtual. From Second Life to online gaming, avatars take on a life of their own as they become observably (at least onscreen) real, and real in the minds of the creators. Taylor comments that some individuals regard their avatar as more real or more corporally real than their own bodies or selves. This raises the question - which body is real for the avatar creator and other online participants?
So rather than an avatar, could Skype become an online process for connecting people in religious and spiritual embodied engagement?
Perhaps another way to chart the change is through the amazing and moving virtual choir. Composer Eric Whitacre uses the online vid format in the most imaginative way - by creating a virtual choir with singers, from all over globe and faiths, linked to a central performance online stage.
Whitacre began the project in 2009 after a fan and friend, Britlin, posted a message to him via a vid of her singing on youtube. He then put out a call to other fans to record themselves singing the same track. Whitacre (2012) writes:
'When I saw Britlin’s video today the idea hit me like a brick: what if hundreds of people did the same thing and then we cut them all together, creating the very first virtual choir?'
Recordings of the Whitacre's virtual choir, especially the sound of beautiful sacred music, Luxe Aurumuqe, emanating from numbers of individual voices so intricately woven together, are evocative, touching, moving - but then I'm brought back to reality with a question raised by Jenny Mackness (2011) on her blogpost: 'Is a virtual choir ...even a choir?' What's missing, she says, is the sensual element and the minute adjustments a chorister would make in a face-to-face choir.
In contrast, there was a sense of spiritual capital or a spirit of togetherness and closeness mentioned by the choristers. In her blogpost Mackness examines Facebook posts by the choir participants and finds one talking about connectivity, emotionality and energy: 'It means that my voice can be heard around the world in harmony with other voices. We are connected through the emotions expressed by Eric’s composure. The energy created cannot be measured and will never die.’
While some comment on the practical difficulties of being alone and finding the right harmonies to sing along with, others exclaim how close they feel to the process, the music and the other singers.
Whitacre's music is so beautiful that I'm persuaded, at least until the sun comes out, to stay and listen online. It moves me. But then I know that the outdoors is calling, not to mention my cat the brown Burmese Merlin, is demanding his walk too.
Which is more engaging and embodied? Perhaps if I took the music I could be in both places at once - but I prefer the thoughts and the walking mashing together, accompanied by the gorgeous carolling of the magpies and the chatter of butcher birds along the riverbank in the early morning. Must dash, nature awaits.
Questions: Over to you
Questions: Over to you
- Are virtual worlds as fun as real worlds?
- Is religious experience or spiritual experience similar or different and how?
- Would you prefer to be in nature or on Facebook?
- What is more engaging - real worlds or virtual worlds?
- If you are religious from a monotheistic faith, do you feel God is online too?
- How does cyber space become sacred space?
- Is religious experience or spiritual experience similar or different and how?
- Would you prefer to be in nature or on Facebook?
- What is more engaging - real worlds or virtual worlds?
- If you are religious from a monotheistic faith, do you feel God is online too?
- How does cyber space become sacred space?
References
Brasher, B.E. Give me that online religion. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Mackness, J. 2011. Is a virtual choir a learning network or even a choir? Oct 16.
http://jennymackness.wordpress.com/2011/10/16/is-a-virtual-choir-a-learning-network-or-even-a-choir/
Taylor, T.L. 2002. Living digitally: embodiment in virtual worlds. In R. Schroeder, Ed., The social life of avatars: presence and interaction in shared virtual environments. London: Springer-Verlag.
Young, G. 2004. Reading and praying online: the continuity of religion online and online religion on the internet. In L.L. Dawson and D. Cowan, Eds. Religion online: finding faith on the internet. London and New York: Routledge.
Whitacre, E. 2012. Eric Whitacre's virtual choir - history. http://ericwhitacre.com/the-virtual-choir/history
Taylor, T.L. 2002. Living digitally: embodiment in virtual worlds. In R. Schroeder, Ed., The social life of avatars: presence and interaction in shared virtual environments. London: Springer-Verlag.
Young, G. 2004. Reading and praying online: the continuity of religion online and online religion on the internet. In L.L. Dawson and D. Cowan, Eds. Religion online: finding faith on the internet. London and New York: Routledge.
Whitacre, E. 2012. Eric Whitacre's virtual choir - history. http://ericwhitacre.com/the-virtual-choir/history
Image Source:
http://pixabay.com/en/drops-drop-leaf-nature-22884/
http://pixabay.com/en/drops-drop-leaf-nature-22884/
No comments:
Post a Comment