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lb_leeStill on Dreamwidth break, but read something too cool not to share. This is from Xavia Publius's "Anima Ex Machina: Meatsuit Realness and Transformative Reenchantment," which is only publicly available in the (perversely paper-only) Digital Performance in Canada. (I ended up emailing Publius for a digital copy. She was very gracious about it.) Accordingly, this academic essay is mostly about technology, performance, and the immersion, enchantment, and rapture thereof, but there's a bit on pages 102-103 about "electric theology" and trance possession and kenosis (the divine emptying of self) in technology:
"An electric theology, then, must account for how (or if) machine ghosts mourn: how they make themselves present with the living, how they inhabit circuits and possess mind-bodies, what levels of reenchantment are necessary to transmerse their planes with ours. (...) I'm using 'theology' in the lay sense of 'study of religion' and not in a specifically Christian framework; that said, kenosis provides an intriguing lens for viewing theatrical embodiment and an important contrast between electric and human theologies."
The rest involves an infographic I am unable to duplicate here, so I'm going to work around that.
There is "the neutral, mundane person, the 'unified'--i.e., one/1--subject. Zero represents total transparency/kenosis via ecstasy, and two represents total possession via trance. The subtractive move to 0 is the realm of the holy actor/ecstasy, with increased effacement creating increased ecstasy. The additive move to 2 is the character/actor trance, with increased immersion creating increased trance. (...) 'in this state [of ecstasy] a performer may suddenly 'drop into' his [sic] role because the vulnerability of ecstasy can be suddenly transformed into the totality of trance possession' (Schechner 202, figure 5.6).
"Two related problems with this model present themselves. One can never reach kenosis (hence why it's divine), nor full possession (Schechner 197). (...) Not only that, but the drop from 0 to 2 implies that the evacuated body is free for a possessing spirit to claim, a notion that rests on a body/mind split. Since I'm attempting to attribute the body/mind split to the realm of machines, it is fitting that the wheel [shape of the infographic] (itself a machine) becomes an electric paradigm for the motion of the ghosts through he memory machine [of media]. Technology/media evacuate and make themselves transparent (meatsuit realness) and/or add themselves through presence effects as the medium/messenger interfering with the body being transmitted. The wheel then does not describe the rituals of the meat performer but of the technology co-constituting the subject. The sloughed-off piece of the four-dimensional body allows for the body/mind split narrative to operate as a technique (battery?) of power."
"An electric theology, then, must account for how (or if) machine ghosts mourn: how they make themselves present with the living, how they inhabit circuits and possess mind-bodies, what levels of reenchantment are necessary to transmerse their planes with ours. (...) I'm using 'theology' in the lay sense of 'study of religion' and not in a specifically Christian framework; that said, kenosis provides an intriguing lens for viewing theatrical embodiment and an important contrast between electric and human theologies."
The rest involves an infographic I am unable to duplicate here, so I'm going to work around that.
There is "the neutral, mundane person, the 'unified'--i.e., one/1--subject. Zero represents total transparency/kenosis via ecstasy, and two represents total possession via trance. The subtractive move to 0 is the realm of the holy actor/ecstasy, with increased effacement creating increased ecstasy. The additive move to 2 is the character/actor trance, with increased immersion creating increased trance. (...) 'in this state [of ecstasy] a performer may suddenly 'drop into' his [sic] role because the vulnerability of ecstasy can be suddenly transformed into the totality of trance possession' (Schechner 202, figure 5.6).
"Two related problems with this model present themselves. One can never reach kenosis (hence why it's divine), nor full possession (Schechner 197). (...) Not only that, but the drop from 0 to 2 implies that the evacuated body is free for a possessing spirit to claim, a notion that rests on a body/mind split. Since I'm attempting to attribute the body/mind split to the realm of machines, it is fitting that the wheel [shape of the infographic] (itself a machine) becomes an electric paradigm for the motion of the ghosts through he memory machine [of media]. Technology/media evacuate and make themselves transparent (meatsuit realness) and/or add themselves through presence effects as the medium/messenger interfering with the body being transmitted. The wheel then does not describe the rituals of the meat performer but of the technology co-constituting the subject. The sloughed-off piece of the four-dimensional body allows for the body/mind split narrative to operate as a technique (battery?) of power."
