>p1

abstract

The digital space has the capacity to provide for a space within a pre-existing space. A space that could subvert and deviate certain systems with the consequence of creating new ones. In the same way, religious symbols, carrier of dogma and doctrines, can be digitalized and decontextualized.

As stated in both the sources analyzed: “The Degraded Iconicity of the Icon: The Icon’s Materiality and Mechanical Reproduction” by Fr. Silouan Justiniano and “Pixelating the Sacred: Digital and Mechanical Reproduction and the Orthodox Christian Icon in the United States” by Amy Slagle, the scholars underline how the extraction of holy elements and their mechanical reproduction provokes a movement from “the sacred to the profane”, in here it relies a key element. With the ease of mass reproduction and consumption in the digital world religious symbol are extracted and they are subjected to spiritual or metaphysical decay.

A symbol juxtaposed to others can actually become vulnerable and be ridiculed. The story line creates parallelism with the religious icons and memes, both created anonymously, mass produced and mass consumed.

As in the physical world the ageing of imagery is bound to the material holder, as in the digital world this is bound to both a decay of the digital form and a more collective one, a sort of moving on old conservative and oppressing dogma, hold by the Catholic Church for example, not symbol of religion but rather of intellectual power.

Therefore, the tension triggered by the extraction of religious symbols (holy within the system of the physical world) bring these to a metaphysical decay (they gradually lose holiness by entering in a world not regulated as the physical) dictated by the phenomena of the digital space.

>final_presentation: “memetic icons”

experimentaions

The experimentations involve mainly digital image editing, in a format of jpg or gif; 3D modelling and its application in the AR. These will then evolve in the future with other media, such as point cloud visualizer and sound editing too.

At this point I will first finalize and specify my current research. I have realized that converging these data into a specific study case will help me avoid un-necessary generalizations and inaccurate statements. The study case will be, in fact, something related to myself in order to tell the story with accuracy and more emotional depth. In the meanwhile, I am planning to continue doing visual and digital experimentation with the material I gather. This would give another relevant approach to my project and possibly for the final outcome.

Regarding an eventual outcome, a key element is the space which might be translated both digitally and physically and the interaction with the viewer/audience to it, such as the
performance.
















Memetic icons is an audio-visual project experienced in the Virtual Reality (VR) designed and created during my attendance at Studio Digital Native, in Design Academy Eindhoven. It aims to track and follow the presence and metamorphosis of christian iconography in the Digital Space. In the four minutes duration, the audience will be virtually experiencing the digital decay of religious representation caused by their over-reactivation and over-reproduction, as well as their resurrection under the new mediatic form of memes. The digital space within its many contradictions possesses an incredible power in subversion and re-invention. The installation in which the video will be experienced is made of a white altarpiece, a white cloth underneath and a cushion for kneeling; the audience will be asked to singularly take part to the VR experience while kneeled on the cushion. The latter will be then part of an unvoluntary performance, perceivable only to those around. In this way the VR set in the space will function as spiritual/virtual key to those in their possession, while an alienating and inaccessible artifact for those outside.