Virtual Effort
Project Type | Individual Academic |
Year | 2019 |
Location | AA School, London |
Our increasingly digital lives are shifting our conventional methods of valuing effort. On one hand, actions and rituals which previously required physical effort is gradually being replaced by virtual actions which require next to no effort at all such as sending a birthday wish with one click online and even spiritual pilgrimages such as Chinese tomb sweeping online rather than at your ancestors' tomb. On the other hand, the internet is increasingly dominated by huge economic forces taking it far from its humble beginnings of freedom of information and equality. The project speculates that this loss of value of effort will get more complex when the internet becomes immersive and seeks to create a new system for virtual effort. "Virtual Effort" raises critical questions about the diminishing value of physical effort in our digital lives, as traditional actions and rituals become replaced by their virtual counterparts. The project delves into how these shifts could further complicate with the advent of an immersive internet, proposing a new system for perceiving value through effort.
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The project looks into the psychology of "effort heuristic" by analyzing activities such as medieval pilgrimages, traditional Chinese tomb-sweeping to understand how people perceive value through exertion, including time, physical labor, and attention.
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Monuments Situated at Different Spots
Pilgrimage, historically encouraged by the Church in the Middle Ages, was seen as a profound, effortful journey to holy shrines, believed to offer spiritual benefits such as the forgiveness of sins and a closer connection to the divine. This journey wasn't just physical but deeply spiritual. Contrastingly, the late Middle Ages' emergence of indulgences, as a means to reduce or negate sin without undergoing the traditional penances such as pilgrimage
Traditional tomb-sweeping can be seen as a form of pilgrimage, involving significant physical and emotional effort to honor the deceased, embodying a deep, personal connection and respect. In contrast, online tomb-sweeping, while still serving the purpose of remembrance, aligns with the concept of indulgences, offering a convenient, albeit less personally taxing, method to commemorate loved ones.
To apply these research, it proposes an immersive internet monument construction ritual. The ritual incorporates key elements of effort perception, drawing inspiration from Tibetan Buddhist pilgrimages, offerings, and the Burning Man festival, applying research on effort to create a meaningful, multi-layered online experience. By emphasizing user ownership over digital assets like NFTs and questioning the true ownership of online content in light of the internet's original egalitarian ideals, it conceptualizes digital creations as "offerings" in a virtual monument. As more individuals sacrifice their digital assets to the monument, the space within the monument that holds these offerings becomes increasingly complex, and the overall structure of the monument grows more massive. The the project not only commemorates the founding spirit of the internet but also reflects on the spiritual force represented by these collective memorials. that revisits and reinvigorates the internet's founding principles of user equality and ownership.
The Kumbum Monastery, also known as Ta'er Monastery, situated in Huangzhong County, Qinghai Province, China, serves as a central hub for religious activities for monks and followers of the Yellow Hat Sect (Gelugpa Sect) of Tibetan Buddhism. This monastery is revered as a sacred site, attracting tens of thousands of pilgrims who save their entire lives to contribute a pearl to its tower within the Dajinwa Temple, symbolizing a strong spirit of collective effort and dedication among its followers, reminiscent of the communal endeavors seen in the creation of monuments in virtual spaces.
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In contrast, Burning Man in Nevada is an experimental gathering rooted in principles like communal effort and self-expression, where participants build and eventually burn a megastructure, incorporating elements of offering and ritual into a temporary desert city. Both embody distinct manifestations of community and shared values, though from different cultural and spiritual perspectives.
The growth of the monument through constant effort symbolizes the accumulation and impact of collective actions over time. It reflects the idea that even small, individual efforts can contribute to significant changes when pooled together, creating a lasting legacy that evolves and expands.
The monument construction ritual not only mimics the sacrificial offerings of Ta'er Monastery and Burning Man but also demands participants exert effort over time and attention(like the experience of looking for a specific spot in Google Earth VR). Participants are required to locate specific monuments at different times, and the internet portal or treaty associated with that monument can only be discussed and amended at those specific times, which is a mechanism to strengthen thes sense of ritual.
GALLERY
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