Religion Journal; Now Available, Spiritual Connection on the Internet
February 27, 2008
Religion Journal; Now Available, Spiritual Connection on the Internet
By Mandy Sink
Sink’s article highlights new web based programs available from the Mission San Xavier del Bac in
Sink includes the commentary of Brenda Basher, an academic in the field of religious Websites. Basher notes that where some see a loss of religion within a virtual field, others see “new possibilities”. Sink also notes that after the September 11th attacks there was a spike in the number of people going online to send prayer requests, as well as approximately 28 million people using the internet in 2001 to look at religious and spiritual material.
Commentary:
It seems that these new services available are well intentioned, as highlighted by Father Gaa. There intended use is to extend a version of the pilgrimage to those who are physically and financially unable to do so. But in this seemingly generous proposal there is a problem. Perhaps making in making it so easy to place a prayer request at the feet of St. Francis Xavier, more and more people who previously would have made a struggled pilgrimage to the mission now simply consider themselves unfit and do so over the internet. IT seems to take the strife and struggle out of worship, something frequently associated with the Christian faith.
Liminality in a Virtual Space
February 25, 2008
The papers written by Vesna, Durkheim and Turner all emphasize the requirement of a community to define a space or to give it life. In a religious context and in Durkheim’s view this can be called a churched, and is what delineates magic from religion. The need to transition into this community from the profane into the sacred id highly emphasized in Turner’s piece and the term liminality defines the space in which one exists while in transition from the profane to the sacred.
Vesna’s virtual networking projects and socially constructed online environments fit the trends defined by both Durkheim and Tuner as a rite of passage, and the changes an individual goes through during that rite. What Vesna describes as the initial chaos of his unaltered environment in n0time seems to be a state of Turner’s liminality, a space in which the masses of unrefined humanity are able to impact the greater structure (envisioned as the abilities of a court jester in said article). This is illustrated geometrically in the tensegrity structure which is characterized by its “elastic interval geometry”.
The effectiveness of both a ritual and a virtual communal space such as n0time are dependent on collaboration. In one instance this collaborative space is a church, the other a virtual environment. It can be argued that the roles taken within each of these spaces is not all that different. This returns us to that sense of liminality and communitas as discussed thoroughly in Turner’s piece. The paradox that Turner seems to face in the discussion is how can the seemingly marginal or lowly social figures play such and influential role in the formation and continuation of a hierarchical social structure such as a religion or in a more applied circumstance, a virtual network. These spaces are again dependent on collaboration. And collaboration exists at the time of liminality, when these singular figures are working to better themselves or prove them worthy to pass from the profane to the sacred. Vesna’s highly interactive environment works both in physical space, determining the time participants spend working on their mema driven avatars, and within the virtual space itself, charting the interaction and development of these figures. It is the addition of a new identity in this virtual space that necessitates a sort of proving ground, or a suspended time (made possible by “virtual un-ending time’) to develop ones most sacred properties.
It is in this new virtual space (the internet or MMORPGs or the like) that time seemingly stands still, and a more complete application or ritual rites of passage are allowed to a higher number of participants, as they are not limited by real world time. IT has become a growing network and developing within it are classes of participants. The structure of these participants directly impacts the structure of the collaboration or the network. These new virtual spaces have become proving grounds within a constantly changing interface unconstrained by real world space time.
2/20 Interactive Fiction and Biblical Interpretation
February 20, 2008
Interaction fiction is one of the earliest and most interesting forms of virtual reality. Simply using a text based interface, it is able to create a seemingly limitless world in which the “player” or secondary author of the piece is able to move about with complete freedom. This is in fact an illusion, as the parameters of the program determine where a player can go and what they can do. While this may seem similar to the contemporary adventure video game such as Tomb Raider or something similar, there is one key difference, and that is that fact that the player is contributing to the work through their text input into the program. This distinction seems to put IF on a different theoretical level than a game, in which ludology can directly apply; rather it has a deeper interactive element. Much of the player input could lead to no productive ends and the program remaining unresponsive; however, it is this illusion of input and a final product consisting of both the programmed language and the human input that leads to a work of fiction that has two authors. One author, the programmer, has complete knowledge of all aspects and possibilities within the game, while the second author, the “player” has at the beginning of the text no knowledge of the environment but at the end has reached a complete understanding of the entire virtual world. It is this learning and discovering aspect of things that separates the text based environment from the visual, movie like environments of modern games as well. In an adventure based third person game one can simply walk around the provided space to see all that can be seen. In an IF there is a fourth wall in which the player must choose what they feel is important to explore, and those explanations are limited or enhanced by the text. There is no pre-determined order of events one must pass through in a linear fashion, but rather one must discover this order through a chaotic world in order to continue, and multiple paths may be taken.
This summation of an IF could be compared to a biblical read, or biblical interpretation. While one is not able to physically input data into the bible and generate a new read out, the quest to find answers within the bible involves theological dead ends and correct paths to simpler answers. Eric Eve’s IF work “All Hope Abandon” draws on this comparison, inserting biblical text into an adventure based IF.
A Religious ritual could be looked at in a similar manner, using designated input or preprogrammed activity to reach a desired outcome.
2/18 Readings. Force application of Narrative to Gameplay
February 18, 2008
Eric Zimmerman’s article “Narrative, Interactivity, Play, and Games” confines the possibilities and abilities of procedure within a game to the parameters of the narrative. His assessment of the “game-story” focuses highly on contextual evidence surrounding the narrative of a game and has little to do with the construct of the game itself. He begins his approach by claiming chess as a narrative form. He categorizes it within his own definition of a narrative as having “a beginning state (the setup of the game), changes to that state (the game play), and a resulting insight (the outcome of the game)”(First Person, 157). This is simply a cultural contextualization of the game chess, and glosses over the parenthetical “game” aspects of chess which are its essential make-up. The narrative quality of chess is only visible in a narrative context, and is peripheral to the construction and execution of the game. What Zimmerman puts in parenthesis to emphasize and ground his point are the only points of chess worth looking at, the composite pieces. The ’setup’ and surrounding rules limiting piece movement constitute the entire framework of the game, and the only options available. So it seems trivial to place importance on the game play as a narrative form if there are limited moves one could make. There is not a limitless narrative structure to work from with character driven decision. This brings up another important objection to Zimmerman’s paper. In his rhetoric, he makes it seem as though the chess pieces are in themselves characters developing a story line. It is important to remember that a chess game has been authored by now one, and is simply a procedure being carried out within a set of determined parameters. There is no intention or story-arch within a chess game. A game of chess could be over within a matter of minutes if a master is set against a novice. IT is simply ones control of the procedure and an understanding of the limited possibilities which determine the “course” of a game of chess.
The distinction between a player driven medium and an authored medium is important when hoping to apply narrative to a game. Zimmerman states “perhaps all narratives can be interactive, but they can be interactive in different ways”. This statement is completely false. A narrative novel in the traditional sense leaves no room for interaction. There is an authored story that has one beginning, and one end, and nothing the reader can do will change that narrative structure. It is naïve to believe that skipping ahead in the story or reading it backwards or something strange as such is going to change the novel itself. It is simply unattached from the reader in any procedural sense, and has no manipulative quality.
John Cayley’s micro-study of the new medium of hypertext and the dissection of sentence structure to the pixels constructing the letter takes the approach appropriate to that of game study. It takes a ‘new medium’, that of hypertext and asks essential questions about a tools impact on what it creates: “do the constraints that are imposed on the manipulation of pixels in order that they produce the outlines of letters tell us anything about those letters or the words which they, in turn, compose?”(First Person, 208). This question, re-figured, could constitute the essential question in analyzing the impact or meaning of a game: “Do the constraints that are imposed on the manipulation of player options in order that they produce the decisions available to a player tell us anything about those decisions or the game which they, in turn, compose?”
2/13 Article Summary: Dreaming of New Forms and Utterances: Seeds
February 13, 2008
Dreaming of New Forms and Utterances: Seeds
By Richard F. Ward
http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=337
In his article, Ward, a protestant, looks to reconcile the paper bound traditional doctrine with the new “TV generation”.
He begins by focusing his argument through the lens of an imaginary woman on her way to meet with her fellow church members to discuss incorporating new technology into their church service, such as light projectors and sound equipment. From here he launches into a discussion of the apparent problem the church is facing I its old ways, something he describes as “ritual boredom”, defining it as “a condition in which people have become fundamentally weary of the rituals available to them for giving their lives shape and meaning”. He then argues that many people these days are looking to escape what they consider to be ritual, the dullness of everyday life and practice. Ward then focuses our attention on defining at ritual as what it does rather than what it is. The argument continues as Ward outlines the central tension, those who believe that Christianity is “fraying” and new technology is the jolt of energy that it needs, and those who believe this new media will distance them from a deep connection with their faith.
Ward then steps back, recognizing that print itself when it came to be used within the church was advancement in technology, and that the use of print has reformed the view of how the gospel is to be taught. The article then transitions into how this print based medium is being transferred onto the television screen. He pints out that Television has become not a medium for communication but persuasion, and that in transferring a print based medium to television, the message becomes less bout the meaning and more about the simplest way to transfer a message across lines.
The author then looks at television and the role it can play in ritual, observing that television viewing and the organization of television media has itself become a ritual for families. He gives the example of the placement of the evening news within the schedule, and how the television and what it projects can regulate what one is supposed to find important or meaningful. Ward then observes how televised Christianity has become about triumphalism, and taking over the airwaves in the name of Jesus.
Ward closes the paper by outlining himself and other like minded Protestants as people in exile against television, and that such people are in a fight to reclaim faith not for television, or even print, but for speech. He champions a new stripped down approach to religion in order to combat both ritual boredom and the new television generation by calling on people to “Demythologize the captor’s sickly produced story and learn to retell biblical ones as amateurs.”
2/11 Readings: Reconciling the Literary, Ritual and Game
February 11, 2008
In the readings this week we are presented with to separate attempts by scholars at reconciling two seemingly distinct forms of study. In “First Person”, ludologists attempt to reconcile video games with a narrative, and in “Ritual Studies” the author looks at combining the narrative and the ritual. We are then left to reconcile these tow arguments to bring the video game closer to the ritual. It is important then to begin by looking at where the articles meet, and what seem to be the battlegrounds of each study.
The first major point of discussion seems to be what role the participant (whether it be a reader, a gamer or a ritual participant) has in determining or influencing the outcome or effectiveness of a certain work. It seems that if a common ground can be established for each of the separate fields in this respect, there will be somewhere to work from. In doing this reading, I established three important questions with which to approach this three sided dilemma: What is the emotional effect of the game, story or ritual on the participant? By what means is this effect enacted? What is the final result of the game, story or ritual, or rather, what does it accomplish?
Coming up with concrete answers for these questions would take a much longer dialogue then I am allowed here, but a few core sections from the “Ritual Readings” combined with a Bogost inspired framework of procedural rhetoric can bring us closer to an answer. Mary Douglas argues that rituals “help us rise above personal and social limitations, even above time and space” (Ritual, 314.) This passage could easily transfer to the description of a video game, in which the avatar allows the human participant to experience things beyond the levels of human limitation. To contrast with this however, Cope seems to box in the ritual, in saying “it re-enacts an established pattern…” and “ritual is a prediction which, completed, fulfills itself.” These contrasting images of a ritual can be combined within the video game medium, in that both can hold true within a designed, virtual space. Within a game, the participant is able to go about the world in which was created with a fair amount of freedom, directly interacting with a place outside the confines of space time, while at the same time are confined by the parameters of the designed virtual reality space as well as the rules encoded within it.
So where is the narrative structure? How does a game create emotion? In “First Person” Jenkins argues that a physical space can create a story subjectively, and that a story defines the rules rather than the rules limiting the story. This same approach is taken Aarseth earlier in a separate article in saying “The game play is constrained by the story in unrealistic ways” (First Person, 51).
So it seems, in trying to answer a series of three questions, we have gotten ourselves down to a simpler struggle between Freedom and Procedure. Can a literary work, a game, and a ritual all be compared on the same grounds if they have differing amount of freedom and procedure. A literary work has little freedom and no procedure, in that the reader has no impact on what is to occur, and only a small amount of decision in how they interpret the work. A game has a seemingly large amount of freedom and varying results, but a gain is limited to the game design. A ritual has large amount of freedom in practice, but is defined by its smaller parts and the anticipated result. So it seems, once again, we open ourselves to more questions than answers.
2/6 News Article Summary: Lenten Humor
February 6, 2008
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article1409362.ece
Posted on the TimesOnline about a year ago, this article highlights the Church of Englands attempts to adapt to a modern age by injecting humor into thetraditionally somber season of Lent.
The Church of England launched a new campaign entitled “Love Life, Live Lent” which invovlved a website inviting users to post clean Lent related jokes, as well as a Text Messaging service designed to spread suggetions on how to live more generously and to spread laughter. The article notes that this new practice is in response to turmoil within the church relating to women preists and gay bishops.
Along with the digital campaign is an associated comedy club, “The Laughing Sole” which will host religious themed nights.
COMMENTARY:
The multi-media campaign of the church clearly looks to reach the younger community, those most sympathetic to gay bishops and women priests. This digital “lightening of the mood” hopes to cast off the patriarchal traditional drab associated with the church.
In gathering the writings of Bogost, Grimes, Eskelinen and Pearce, there comes an interesting parallel in the criticisms of ritual and the criticisms of VR analysis. Key aspects of both practices overlap, and similar distinctions are drawn in the limitations of each. The easiest way to illustrate the comparisons is by filtering the separate analysis of the game world through the lens of Grimes specifications of ritual as an “Infelicitous Performance”. In this way, there is the ability to bring the limitations of a game as effective Procedural Rhetoric and the failure of a ritual to be effective very close together.
Eskelinen defines a game as a system of “ends and means” (Wardrip-Fruin 38). This same definition could be applied to “ritual”, especially considering terms used by Austin such as “performative utterance” meaning words are used to accomplish a task rather than merely describing them. It can be deduced than that the role words and action play within a ritual are not unlike the procedural rhetoric enacted within VR gaming environment. Applying Ritual Criticism into a gaming context is now much simpler.
Grimes outlines in his article what Austin calls types of Infelicitous Performances, or more simply, rituals which are ineffective at their designated task. The failures categorized are mostly attached to human behaviors or misjudgments, such as vague explanation of the formula within the ritual, misapplication of the ritual, or acting beyond the proper boundaries of a ritual. These failures come about due not to the inherent qualities of the ritual, but rather the ineffectiveness of someone to carry them out. This idea correlates to Eskelinen distinction between conventions and rules within a VR gaming environment. The author, in comparing narrative works to procedural, states that “one can by all means change between conventions while reading a narrative, but one cannot change the rules of a game while playing”(Wardrip-Fruin 39).
It can be concluded then that many of the outlined failures of a ritual (those dependent on a human error) may not apply within a VR ritual or game which is manipulating through procedural rhetoric. Thus come vast possibilities of refining a ritual to a set of computer guided procedures or rules, that when executed within the boundaries of the system by the player, would result in what could be defined as an exact ritual, free of flaws or the inconsistencies inherent in human practice. One could argue then that in order to have a truly successful ritual free of an error it MUST be guided by a procedural system.
The accuracy of a procedural system may seem to many the answer to the problem of what Austin calls “infelicitous performance.”
