Ritual consciousness is an altered state of consciousness that transpires beyond the boundaries of the known and gives rise to a duration referred to as time out of time. This extraordinary duration encompasses three interrelated factors: digital as opposed to analogue conduct of time, tempo and communitas. Under specific formal conditions, these factors may emerge in the context of networked rituals and outside their traditional and earthbound religious or spiritual settings. In this article, the three factors are analysed in relation to the author’s networked rites on the Waterwheel platform. The rites are designed to explore ritual consciousness and produce prototype morphic fields of compassion, which are aimed at counteracting the prevalent narrative of violence. There is an emphasis on communitas, a liminal and nonhierarchical communal state of oneness that could generate compassion. Based on researches in anthropology, biogenetic structuralism, cognitive neuroscience and morphic resonance, communitas is metaphorically envisioned as the communion of non-local brains within a networked mind and morphic field. The article postulates that the virtual and organic hybridity of the rites involve the participants’ body, brain and fields of the mind in the explorations of ritual consciousness.

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In 1945 the filmmaker Maya Deren sent a scenario to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York with a proposal to make a 16mm film on the ancient Egyptian tomb of Perneb. In the proposal she emphasises the difficulty, which the topic of ancient Egypt poses to viewers in terms of their ability to identify with a culture whose ideology is so different from their own. Deren devises a strategy akin to racial memory with which to meaningfully reconstruct the life of the tomb's deceased dweller. An analysis of her ideas firstly demonstrates how she plans to utilise the cinematic apparatus in conceptual affinity with the ancient Egyptian belief thereby offering the viewers a participatory and apparitional experience in archaic consciousness of eternal life, whilst following the narrative of the man whose spirit inhabits the tomb. Secondly, Deren explicates that archaic rituals and modern technologies are both time-based and relativistic. Indeed, augmented reality and virtual reality can be employed to manipulate and transfigure our perception of, and position in, space-time. Technoetic sensibility is accordingly applied to theoretically visualise the tomb as a digitally enhanced time-machine and as apparitional, participatory, as well as enlightening, encounter with a remote culture.

The article proposes that the modern notion of the spiritual in art, which was theorized at the beginning of the twentieth century, although remains pivotal to the discourse of art and the spiritual, has radically shifted as a result of changing attitudes to the body–mind relations instigated by popular trends of contemporary spiritualities. This cultural tendency is demonstrated by the analysis of the networked art form of Moon Ribas, e.g., dance with earthquakes. Ribas performs a cyborg body and consciousness that, as contended, could be holistically enhanced and develop a unique compassionate awareness. In addition, I reflect on two examples from my performative practice of Networked Rites that interplay with speculative metaphors, spiritual and shamanic techniques, networked aesthetic forms and technologies. The first invokes communitas as a collective, non-local, networked noetic field. The second utilizes a decision-making app as a mediating device between the body and mind for the making of a prototype cyborg noetic field instilled with auspicious resonance. The article mainly implies that spiritual art continues to evolve through technoetic aesthetics fusing emerging technologies, science and shamanic, spiritual insight. Current trends may develop into benevolent and experiential applications based on the interrelations of human and cyborg body and consciousness.

The article proposes an interpretative study of Darren Aronofsky’s film Noah. The film draws inspiration from various spiritual traditions ranging from shamanism to Buddhism, whilst relying heavily on Jewish midrash, and adds a layer of innovation. Our main assertion is that the film attempts to present three viewpoints on issues of religion, humanity, nature, and God—while negating two of them and preferring one. Each of the various characters and groups in the film represents one of the three stances, as the film’s protagonist must cope with the problematic nature of his worldview and revisit it. The film engages with current pivotal issues: climate change, the depletion of natural resources, materialism and hedonism, fundamentalism in both religious and environmental trends, suspicion of religious institutionalized interpretations, and gendered spiritual religious beliefs. Thus, the film Noah is a cultural product that disseminates spiritual ideas and values within mainstream culture.