Liminality in a Virtual Space

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.