GD

Natalie Tham, Deena Sabrina, Jessica Chua, Greta Dobson and Isabelle Anastasia Tan

Abstract

On a global scale, there has been an increasing permeation of digital influences and elements into various religions. This shift from a physical experience to an increasingly online one has subverted the ordinary experience of prayer, worship and religious understanding. Based on two art pieces that we have selected: Gyosen Asakura’s “techno hoyo” ritual and Signe Pierce’s “Big Sister is Watching You”, we have evaluated that the differences ensuing digital influences on religion is based on the 5 human senses – smell, sight, hearing, touch and taste.

The layout of our exhibition (refer to Figure 1) involves 5 rooms, with one sense featured per room that captures the differences between a purely physical religious setting and one that involves digital influences.

Figure 1: Proposed Floor-plan

The briefing zone highlights current artworks and pieces that already involve digital influences with religion, while each room provides a futuristic stimulation of how digital culture can change current rituals and practices.

Each room carries with it a unique method of reviewing the audience’s thoughts: the circle represents a sound machine that employs a Wordcloud technology, customized to capture adjectives mentioned by the audience hence highlighting their feelings. The triangle is a rating machine placed at the exit, allowing them to answer questions as to whether they understand the exhibitory piece in each room.

From this experience, we aim to capture human feelings with a shift from a personal, organic experience to one of confusion and unsettlement, coupled with a sense of disorientation for the individual. Our aim is for the audience to dwell in these afterthoughts, as they critique whether digital influences are beneficial or detrimental to a religion’s authenticity.

i) The necessity of the integration of digital culture into the religious sphere. ii) Implications of the reduction in senses with regard to the authenticity of a religion.

Gyosen Asakura’s “techno hoyo” ritual

The “techno hoyo” ritual performed by DJ-turned-priest Gyosen Asakura, is intended to relate to the younger masses as the number of young Buddhist temple worshipers began to decline sharply. To resolve the problem, Asakura combined techno music and lighting to bring the idea of Buddhism’s “pure land” to the public. The amalgamation of technology and traditional religious practices went viral on social media and sparked discourse on the legitimacy of Asakura’s creation as a religious service.

At Japan’s Shoonji Temple, projection mapping is utilized to illuminate the temple architecture with coloured lights and traditional religious images whilst the service take place. Asakura utilised lighting similar to those in dance clubs to emphasise the holy land as a place with iridescent coloured lights. Japanese Buddhism has the tradition of illuminating the temple altar with candle light to highlight the beauty of its gold leaf embellishment (Kyoto National Museum). The coloured lights also fulfil this role, and constructs a new layer of meaning for the worshippers. This serves as an extension of traditional practices with new mediums, to enhance the aesthetic quality of the religion.

Asakura also enmeshes Buddhist sutra with techno beats and performs live on the altar. The hypnotising yet meditative soundscape evokes the image of paradise in afterlife. Through this experience, the worshipper cultivates discipline and dignity through the techno music, instead of letting it become a distraction from religion.

According to Asakura, the ritual had many positive and negative feedback alike. He says that the people who support it feels that it makes them feel closer to the Buddhist pure land. However, some criticisms that he has received includes an argument that Buddhist prayers should be “serious and quiet” instead of one that mimics rave culture.

The work subverts expectation of traditional Buddhist practices by juxtaposing conventions against a reality that is opposite of most attendees. Despite the online popularity, the 3 services has only garnered about 400 attendees thus far. The idea is still not as popular in real life and people may still find it ambiguous. Perhaps, it is not popular especially to the older generation.

The “techno hoyo” fits into our exhibition as it presents to the viewer an unexpected view of Buddhist worship due to the subverted elements of usually monotonous Buddhist chants, a quiet surrounding and a stagnant space for prayer. This work transgresses these norms to present Buddhist worship as a vibrant and colourful experience that permeate our senses, although not in the most conventional way.

As much as the unfamiliarity of these religious representations posit us to think of how authentic and religiously significant these modern practices truly are, the progression of technology and the increasing convergence of digital culture and religion in our era motivates us to consider the possibility of a renewed form of such religious practice in the near future. Ultimately, Asakura’s intention of reaching out to the religious masses with a non-traditional method can be perceived to be a form of creating merit, a part of a Buddhist practice of spreading the words of Buddha, or in other words, “expounding the Dhamma” (Wijesinghe 9). The central idea of Buddhism is still the core of the “techno hoyo” and the ritual deviates towards promoting religious experience with a heightened digital experience of sound and sight, rather than diminishing it.

Figure 2: Shoonji Temple, Japan with the projection mapping involving neon lights.  

Signe Pierce’s “Big Sister’s Lair”

“Big Sister’s Lair” by multimedia artist Signe Pierce is an interactive installation that critiques the ubiquitous yet obscure notion of surveillance in contemporary society. Displayed at Germany’s Museum der bildenden Künste as part of the Virtual Normality: Women Net Artists 2.0 exhibition (Museum der bildenden Künste 2018), it consists of a gallery space deliberately furnished to resemble a bedroom — a comfortable bed to rest on, along with decorations such as vases of flowers on the two bedside tables to evoke a homely feeling. This illusion of the gallery being a private space is eroded when the visitors’ image is captured by smart devices (iPad, iphone etcetera) installed around the room and shown on interconnected screens. A close-up image of an eye —presumably those of a female — is projected on the bed’s white sheets. Such juxtaposition between the secluded and exposed, apathetic and anxious, is rendered more stark by the use of Pierce’s signature neon colour palette. Visitors are invited to relax within the installation space and contemplate about the notion of privacy under digital media and the state’s panoptic gaze.

Pierce’s work stems from the gendered conception of George Orwell’s Big Brother, which evokes patriarchal, non-consensual and intrusive surveillance on the citizen. In 2018, the surveillance speculated by Orwell in 1949, has become true, with digital platforms selling information about their users which they accumulate through constantly watching over them. Theories of filter bubbles and echo chamber, in relation to the personalised web proves this. Pierce’s pieces want to propose a counter character to Big Brother, Big Sister, who attempts to protect the observed citizen by watching her Brother. Here, the observed citizen, through Big Sister, is watching as he is being watched.

While it might not seem like Pierce’s intention is related to religion but when considering the concept of omnipresence of God, in the context of our digital society, is to inevitably link it to the Panopticon, George Orwell’s Big Brother, government and IT surveillance. Pierce provides the most interesting take on such issue in her glowing, neon lit intimate works. The space created by her, which wants to empower the visitor and particularly women, following her cyberfeminist agenda, is a culmination of the confusion of today’s digital landscape and one’s personal religious discovery. In such a space, one is confronted with themselves in the gloomy neon lighting by seeing their reflections in the screen with the live recording of the camera, seemingly innocently places on the bedside table. While the visitor can feel empowered by the space, they are also aware that they are subject to surveillance, they feel they need to behave in front of the camera. Similarly, the religious individual is aware of the omnipresence of God, therefore understands themselves in relation to the consequences that stem from God’s rule.

Even though such experiences may seem opposed, they end up creating the same processes within individuals: moderating, modifying, editing, restricting, controlling ourselves because we don't want to deal with the consequences and want to appear perfect to god, our followers, the government.

Signe Pierce in the Big Sister’s Lair room

References

Kyoto National Museum. “Use of Gold in Paintings - Google Arts & Culture.” Google, Google, artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/fALy7oXz0ilaLw.

Wijesinghe, Mahinda. “Ten Ways of Making Merit.” Ten Ways of Making Merit, 2000, www.dhammatalks.net/Books8/Bhikkhu_Nyanadassana_n_Mahinda_Ten-ways-of-making-MERIT.pdf.

The fusion of science and art open doors to possibilities beyond our imaginations. 

“Yoko Shimizu spent her childhood growing up in New York. She studied bio-chemistry at university, and the art that she encountered while in New York left a deep and lasting impression on her. These two elements were the starting point for her activities in science as well as a contemporary artist. [...] While also active as a DJ and simultaneous interpreter, she has created an art that through the use of various forms of media, gives you a sense of familiarity with her pieces.With all the possibilities encompassing the fusion of science and art, who knows what the future might hold.”

La vie en rose by virtual singer program mentioned in the week 10: reading questions post. 

To what extent do you agree with the notion that science is culture?

I think a distinction between science and culture is not useful because culture refers to a set of human intellectual knowledge, a definition that science fit perfectly  but presuming that they are indeed separate, science can be seen through many examples as a fundamental influence on other forms of culture.

sci-fi can be considered as evidence that science is culture. scientific experiments, discoveries and possibilities fascinate those that might not be directly involved in a scientific field themselves but they can turn such inspiration into art, for example film. science fiction is arguably one of the most popular and impactful genres of modern cinema as can be seen by the successes of star wars, star trek, avatar, 2001: space odyssey and many more.

A further example I found in the relationships between scientific development of technologies and the evolution of music. thanks to technological affordances new genres of music have been created, for example the synthesizer, an electronic music instrument that creates sounds through conversion of electric signals, enabled artists in the 1960-70s to experiment with music, creating iconic genres such as progressive rock, dance music, synth-pop, electronic and techno. These new genres of music have then had themselves great cultural significance and even created new ones for example club culture. Nowadays thanks to digital platforms, music has become of the most participatory and widely available cultural practice, for both listeners and creators. Remixability is a fundamental element to music today, for example the Virtual Singer, a program which will generate a human voice from the lyrics and make the computer "sing". The program is an additional module for Melody Assistant, which is both a score editor and a digital synthesizer that allows for simple, immediate creation on music. Example with the famous french song La Vie en Rose  http://www.myriad-online.com/resources/demosvs/rose.mp3  

Looking at the TEDtalk by Honor Harger, I felt that her argument was a bit superficial, even though I did not need convincing and I do agree with her that science is culture. To me her argument seems to be that if you place a scientific work in an art museum/space it becomes culture with example of the discovery by NUS student, Peng Kian. However, throughout the semester we have extensively talked about how nowadays, with the great help of digital media, art can be found in any space and it is just as relevant and important even if not placed in the white cube. Maybe it has been a misinterpretation on my part but I think there are better ways to argue that science is culture, as my classmates have done in their forum posts.

How do you think digital media in particular affords intersections between science and art?

It has allowed creatives in both science and art to have new tools and new affordances that have enhanced what was already part of culture and these disciplines but also enabled the creation of whole new processes, for example, most obviously, to eliminate the geographical distances between individuals.

For example the Telegarden that united gardening, technology, science and digital enhancement of creation of communities. The project was developed at the University of Southern California and went online in June 1995 until august 2004. Online visitors and creators were able to contribute to the growth of a small garden by access the website and giving instructions to a robot arm present within the garden. it is interesting to see on the website now there is a PDF that allows to view the 3D model of the arm. The garden however has been lost but the community that is had created is remembered and became long-lasting (http://goldberg.berkeley.edu/garden/Ars/).

Another example is the Engineering Utopia, organized by Kris Paulsen and presented by the Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences, the Arts Initiative and Urban Arts Space, and the College of Engineering from may until july 2017. The exhibition analyzed the relationships between  artists and engineers, who work with the creative application of science and empirical evidence methods. “context of art has allowed for makers, artists and engineers alike, to dream greatly and “fail” wildly, all the while making insightful discoveries about our technological environment and the human condition in the information age”. Therefore the exhibition focuses on the interactions between art and engineering in the context of society heavily influenced by the culture of digital media (https://uas.osu.edu/exhibitions/engineering-utopia).

  What do you think can be some benefits brought about by the convergence between science and culture? Do you also see any potential pitfalls?

3D Model of the Telegarden for 3D printers (.STL file) 

The 3D model of the 3D printer for the Telegarden project mentioned in the previous post. 

The Telegarden

1995-2004, Ars Electronica Museum, Linz Austria.

Co-directors: Ken Goldberg and Joseph Santarromana 

The Telegarden is an art installation that allows web users to view and interact with a remote garden filled with living plants. Members can plant, water, and monitor the progress of seedlings via the tender movements of an industrial robot arm.

http://goldberg.berkeley.edu/garden/Ars/ 

http://www.intelligentagent.com/archive/Vol4_No2_ip_garnett.htm

What do you think is the particular value of oral history in documenting digital art and culture? Explain with examples where appropriate.

I found myself agreeing with Muller when she stated that it is really interesting and important to consider the relationship between the development of technology and the documentation of media art. As she stated, through history humans have moved through different periods in the ways we record culture and its artifacts, it is particularly amusing to imagine times when writing did not exist, particularly as I am typing these thoughts, and when writing was starting to be introduced, a man of immense cultural importance like Socrates refused to write his philosophy because writing was downgrading and degrading his ideas. Though writing is still apparently the most important way of communication and, especially, recording it, with the advent of the internet, society is, to a certain extent, going back to prioritizing audio and visual content. When considering daily lives, as online users we value and utilize audiovisual journaling of our days much more than written, for example, Instagram and snapchat have revolutionized the practice with the introduction of short video “stories”.

How is intertextuality intertwined with digital art and culture? Discuss in relation to any topics from previous weeks that you feel may be appropriate.

intertextuality is intertwined with digital art and culture through the interactive characteristic of digital spaces. Digital culture is not the first in which, remix and intertextuality play an important role, for example, paintings by masters would often be copied to the minuscular detail, however the vast reach of interactivity is what makes digital culture different. As was seen in week 6 with Hollywood Burn by Soda jerk (https://vimeo.com/45360616 ) a film made of clips of other film modified and reconstructed to created a completely new story and message. Additionally, Joy Garnett created an artwork utilizing someone else’s cropped picture and faced copyright claims because of it ( http://www.intelligentagent.com/archive/Vol4_No2_ip_garnett.htm ). Both examples, are relevant when discussing intertextuality in digital art but might seem distant when considering digital “low” culture, that which belongs to ordinary online individuals. What Peterson defines as the categories of intertextual social action can be evidently seen in digital culture with the phenomenon of vines. Vine was a platform on which 6 seconds videos would be upload and just that, however became one of the most important pieces of intertextuality online. When the platform was taken down, users online started creating compilations online with all kinds of titles, one of the most common being “vines i reference […]” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tch1fKJJtJ4 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1VpCl7srvE are just a couple of many examples. As Peterson explained, there is an expectation for people in highly mediated societies to be aware and knowledgeable of such intertextual practices.

How do you think ethnography can be useful in examining digital art and culture? Explain with examples from your current process in developing Task 1.

Ethnography is very useful when examining digital culture and art because the individual has gained new importance in culture with digital technologies. Everyone user is important in digital spaces and even more so, when dealing with art because it aches for a reaction. In Task 1, the group is analyzing different ways in which religion has changed and adapted to the digital sphere, therefore our project is intrinsically ethnographic as we are looking at how individuals interact with technology in their religious practices. We are directly interested in people’s experiences.

How might you apply reflective curatorial practice to your own curatorial projects? Explain with examples from your current process in developing Task 1.

stills from Garden of Words (2013), a Japanese animated 46minute film, created using a combination of hand-drawn animation, rotoscoping and computer animation (CGI). Written, directed and edited by Makoto Shinkai, animated by CoMix Wave Films and distributed by Toho 

my part of the presentation to illustrate the development of our exhibit. 

#BRBTIME4GOD

(#4GOD)

to be decided by the class

“my favourite kind of men is amen” possible subtitle

sight

introspection / how we see ourselves

omnipresence-surveillance / how God sees us

INTROSPECTION

nam jun paik:

Nam June Paik was a Korean American artist.

Founder of video art.

He criticized new mass mediums with irony and juxtapositions that anticipated issue with reality of the current digital world.

“In many people’s opinion, there is a contradiction between religion and science and technology. In other words, our attitudes to religious and technology, is just like people cannot live in both idealism and materialism. However we can see how did Paik do with the opposite sides”

TV Buddha:

medium: television monitor, video camera, painted wooden Buddha, tripod, plinth

conceptual use of video – first developed by Paik – in which a camera and a monitor loop in real time, blurring the object–subject distinction, (which is also used in the second artwork)

(notes for me)

The artwork raises questions among the audience about the mass media ideologies of the time. (Hanzal, 2001) The artwork by Paik proposes the instillation of a Buddha, which is a man-made object, and juxtaposes it beside the television. The television represents the emerging technologies and effects of modernisation during that time, which is ironic when contrasted with the Buddha, which is a religious symbol of peace and tranquillity – quite the opposite of the technological ‘world.’

buddha watching himself is showing concerns for the vanity of the time.

Three Eggs:

medium: Video, 2 colour television receivers, video camera, tripod and eggs

1975-1982

(notes for me)

The components are arranged in a line on a table and function in relation to each other: the video camera, positioned on the floor and angled towards the table, films an egg; the first television receiver projects the filmed footage of this egg; and the second television receiver displays a real egg where the removed television tube should be.

In Three Eggs the closed-circuit television system is used in a humorous pun on illusion and reality. The work functions as a staged drama – a meditation on looking – in which different modes of presenting and receiving information are displayed to the viewer. Through the arrangement of eggs – both actual and represented – Paik encourages us to question the reality of the recorded image. The real egg becomes a televised one, shown via the monitor on its right-hand side, whereas the ‘televised’ egg, visible in the television monitor next to it, is, in fact, real.

With this he anticipated the distortion of reality that happens to us now through the internet and social media.

the religious interpretation i found is that of the egg.

the egg is commonly used in christian religion as the symbol of perfection e.g. Pala di Brera or Pala Montefeltro by Piero della Francesca so it is interesting that Paik decided to use the egg as the object to question out reality. when in christianity the egg represent perfection and creation (there are many interpretations these are the ones i like the most), quite opposite of reality.

another interesting way to look at the egg is to think about it in modern times and what the object means in a digital cultural context — the egg on twitter

which represents the lack of identity and is perceived as a social positioning on the online platform. it is for people that do not want to show who they are which online basically means they are no one because they cant be recognized visually.

“Twitter drops 'egg' avatar in attempt to break association with internet trolls

The social network says it is introducing a new default profile photo – a gender neutral silhouette – in a bid to ‘prompt more self-expression’”

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/03/twitter-drops-egg-avatar-in-attempt-to-break-association-with-internet-trolls

OMNIPRESENCE

signe pierce:

American multimedia artist and performer

cyberfemminist

https://www.instagram.com/p/BKVz-sBjgtx/

Big Sister’s Lair

presented at Virtual Normality — Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig (https://mdbk.de/en/exhibitions/netzkuenstlerinnen-2.0/ ) a group exhibition curated by @sabrinasteinek and @anika.

medium: the space, corner of the Sight room or another room, bed, iPad, iphone, interconnected screens, mirrors and neon lights

Museum guests are invited in the intimate space, to lay on the bed and wonder about they presence in the room and the digital object recording them(selves).

(notes for me)

She didn't specify that it is linked to religion but this was my interpretation when we started to think about the exhibit. because i am not religious and have never been, I am a bit more critical towards religion than my group mates, which is great because it gives me opportunity to consider new perspectives. However, my initial reaction to the concept of omnipresence of god, in the context of our digital society, is to inevitably link it to the panopticon, George Orwell’s Big brother, government and IT surveillance.

Pierce is the artist that provides the most interesting take on such issue in her glowing, neon lit intimate works.

she says that women can use new media to combat the patriarchy and being watched (by government, the male gaze and god) which is up to debate because while women empower themselves online they are still being watched whether they want to or not.

my notes from the brainstorming session of today for the final group project.