[-empyre-] the promise of the sacred?

["Damien Everett" <damien.everett@rmit.edu.au>]

>TECHONOLOGY IS NOT A PROMISE. IT IS NOT A PROGRESS. It will not replace the real, organic, material world. It is simply a new understanding.

Hmmm, perhaps my working with Stelarc has influenced the way I see "technology", 
 as an extension of ourselves(physical, emotional, mental, spiritual)... ideally as a way of augmenting our potentials, a way of enhancing our senses and influence in the domain. Understanding is the passive, reflective half, whilst there is also technology in action: application.

on that note, Jill said:
>i saw a video at a conference of  a man with parkinsons' (you know, all trembly) having a few electrodes on his body "adjusting his internal electrical balances"  and hey presto he could move normally, tremble-free. i can imagine  some pretty weird art happening with that technology.

hmmm, yep stelarc has been working with this for years: http://stelarc.va.com.au

>NetArt is the quintessential dematerialized phenomenon : it has no shape, no boundaries, and no physical form. It floats on our screens, like a ghost, present but immaterial. 
>We do not yet know where the sacred lie in "things" created through technology. 
> The richness of physical artwork is a material, physical and organic one. But netart exists, grows
and multiplies in an different world, where richness of experience is not measured by how the senses are being provoked, but by how the brain is being challenged to create new connections, new associations, new understandings. This is where the richness, the spirituality and the « sacredness » of netart lie.

As I see it, everything we experience is "Media"(MAYA),  the fabric of the universal matrix... every "thing" is data encoded as symbol, a virtual archetype of which the physicality / tangability shadows this thought form. 

We might want to believe that we exist in the realworld, but I put it that we actually inhabit the virtual world, and we perceive that "realworld" though the filtered lens of our consciousness and physicality (or monitor, speakers, or force feedback joysticks)

This is a relativistic framework in which all symbols are contextually based... a cream pie may be a tasty treat in one moment and a gleeful means of embarrassment in another (myCreamedSoft ;)

the symbolic form is what evokes a reaction... sacredness is a state of mind caused by creating an appropriate context by linking the right associations in the right way. The difficulty as I see it in accessing the sacred is bypassing/transcending  the critical mind... which is often distracted by other issues such as expectations... ("that damn PROMISE has let me down yet again!")

I love the paradoxical influence of zen buddhism and its irreverence:
 "if you see buddha along the road, shoot him... (and if he seems to be holding some kind of _message_, SHOOT HIM AGAIN AND AGAIN...    AND THEN AGAIN!  (enough?) ;) "
in which a golden statue of the divine is no more sacred than a dog dropping...

As such I reserve the right to change my mind in any moment and even forget about all this silliness and go for a swim in the ocean ;) 

damien