Tombs and Reels of Consciousness: The aesthetics that interlink ancient ritualistic artefacts and digital, augmented and virtual reality

Abstract

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.

Sentient: A social media environment as a conscious living system

“…In a mixed-reality environment, the smartphone thus becomes a technological instrument that serves the connectivity with the natural environment rather than becoming the focus of attention, which in turn becomes the actual holistic experience of photosynthesis. Another example of a planned live event is an encounter with Pernebas discussed in a previous EVA presentation and paperwhich cannot be completed without re-connecting his burial chamber in Saqqara Egypt and his tomb at The Met, through a livestreaming performative and participatory event (Moore 2019). In this case, connectivity serves not only a geographically remote operation, but also a mythical and ceremonial performance with cultural and educational merits.…”