2/13 Article Summary: Dreaming of New Forms and Utterances: Seeds

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

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

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.

2/4 Readings: Solving Infelicitous Performance through Procedural Rhetoric

            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.”

Reactions to “The Sacred and the Virtual’ in Relation to Bogost’s Procedural Rhetoric

    After reading the paper published by Schroder, Heather and Lee, some of Bogosts thoughts on what he calls Procedural Rhetoric are applicable to the E-Church VR world. It seems as though elements of the procedural rhetoric have taken hold within this virtual community, while others have been preceded by a different sort of atmosphere, one more specific to multi-user worlds, or ‘gamers’. It is clear through the article that the action Bogost describes as “authoring arguments through processes” is substantiated not in the E-church itself as a program or VR world, but in the role of the ‘Leader’ within these worlds whose responsibility it is to instruct and preach thorough the text based format. It seems then, that it is not the E-church itself which is creating this form of religious ritual but it is the people willing to participate. The E-church is simply a converging point, but an important one. The space automatically through its name and intended use creates a new religious space within which to gather. However, the author is quick to point out that the space is often invaded by immature action not to be found within a real church. Here is observed a limitation to Bogost’s procedural rhetoric within the E-church, in that it is only as effective as those individuals who chose to interact within it.

Article Link Available Below

http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol4/issue2/schroeder.html

‘The Sacred and the Virtual’ Article Summary

The Sacred and the Virtual: Religion in Multi-User Virtual Reality

            -Ralph Schroder, Noel Heather, Raymond M. Lee.

            This article explores the interactions among participants in an Electronic Church (E-Church) outlined by the authors as a Virtual Reality ( VR) space in which multiple users can engage in simulated church services.  The paper begins by outlining the general characteristics of  such a multi-user VR world, including such things as the avatar, human-like characters which are a surrogate for moving throughout a three dimensional space as well as a means for text-based chatting and prayer.

            The authors then outline what sets and E-Church VR environment apart from other VR worlds. The focus is primarily on the social interaction of participants within an ‘e-service’ and how it is similar to or differs from standard interaction within non-religious VR worlds. Highlighted are the ideas that the social interaction is more tightly structured within the E-church, with participants in a service following the instructions or cues of an assigned Leader of the service, serving the role of a priest, rabbi or the like. This religious VR world is also regulated by real world time, with meeting times posted on bulletins within the world. The avatars within the service restrain their movements as one would in a real world service, within limited movement during the service as they tend to sit and listen. It is noted within the article however that prominent influences of a newer technology based society often set the services apart from a real world service. The three mentioned influences are the “healing powers” of the leader being modeled after tele-evangelism, the text based smiley faces and other abbreviated forms of communication arising from the online community, and the frivolous and often immature behaviors witnessed within the service being derived from gamer culture.

            The paper then goes into a lengthy discussion of the ethical dilemmas facing a researcher in observing and reporting the actions of others within the VR E-church. What amounts from this discussion is little more than an outline of how the authors went about the research, and the reasoning behind not revealing names of participants or times the interactions reported had taken place.

            Language used within the E-church is latter part of the paper. Being the primary form of communication in such a text based E-church; the subtleties of the religious languages used gave the authors great insight into the form of worship used. The authors categorize it as “informal, interactive, charismatic-style worship” and point out its similarities to worship developed in parallel to 1960’s American Radicalism. Highlighted are inverted gender roles, as well as the importance of a sense of self within the avatar representing the human counterpart, Brought into this discussion is a skepticism of how ‘real’ a VR service could be if the participants are masked behind an avatar, and if the weight of a soul seeking service can be transported across digital lines. Important to this discussion are the parallels between the text used within the E-Church and what could be found in a real service, and how little they differ.

            The paper closes with an introduction of Durkheim’s definition of a ritual as contain three important elements:  the physical co-presence of people, the ritualization of actions in coordination of gesture and voice and symbolic sacred objects. The authors then reconciles these with the E-church, pointing out that while the physical limitations are there, if absorbed into a VR Church, the absence can seem negligible.

 

-John W. Borchert

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