Social Ties
University of Texas at Austin
Elastic Realities in the Metaverse: On the Social Construction of Image-based Communication in Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Realities View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Andreas Schelske
The term metaverse characterizes computer-supported media in which primarily image-based forms of virtual realities, augmented realities, and mixed realities can be communicated. Considering these three media forms, two peculiarities stand out. First, pictorial signs create an immersive experience that makes images largely obsolete as a classic form of visual communication. And second, the three media forms cause social constructions of pictorial realities to become increasingly elastic. The paper shows how communicated realities in images are becoming more elastic to vary between fact, fake and fiction, or between sign and matter. Societies construct their image-based knowledge, but this remains purposeful only if consensual corridors guide what is to be considered real, virtual, current, and moral. Further, the often misunderstood oppositions between real and virtual are taken up to argue that the virtual is real but not actual. The social construction of image-based knowledge creates a virtual reality in the metaverse. This virtual reality is collectively experienced as real, but in its materiality, it is often said to lack actuality. In the last century, the screen still protected the viewer from contact with the physical world. In the 21st century, the viewer is supposed to feel immersively involved in order to intensify real contact with a virtual matter and virtual energy. The study explores the question: How elastic can image-based knowledge be in order to seem action-oriented when the actuality of virtual realities is collectively determined?
The Patriarchal Megachurch in Korea and Its Visuals : Visual Promotion of the Pastor’s Charismatic Leadership and the Patriarchal Order in the Church
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Suki Kwon
I observed images of Jesus the Good Shepherd produced in various mediums in several of the megachurches I visited. These images are often located in prominent places such as the façade of the building, in the front garden, and on the main entrance. In this study, I explore how patriarchal megachurches in Korea promote the pastor's charismatic leadership and the patriarchal order in the church visually.
Technology towards Transcendence: Subliminal Occultism and German Expressionist Cinema View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Colton Ochsner
After World War One, some of the most famous movies included Expressionist productions like Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927). Though scholars generally agree that no Expressionist movement ever existed in cinema, I assert that the directors and screenwriters of movies now called “Expressionist” maintained among themselves a common ideographic layout based thematically on the tropical zodiac of Western astrology, and, within the mise-en-scènes, the minor arcana pips from the tarot deck by Arthur Edward Waite (originally from 1910), while basing their characters on the sipherot of the Hermetic cabala. This layout, which they implemented in all their so-called Expressionist movies, might most aptly be called an occult blueprint. I present this material in order to set forth the argument that the subtlety, the shrewdness, and the subliminality of occult ideography in Expressionist cinema has been ignored, neglected, and downright unnoticed in the whole of film and historical scholarship. But it is a field that demands to be taken more seriously by professionals and requires the attention of those familiar with the occult publications, arcane practices, and esoteric schools of and around Weimar Germany. Every scholar agrees: movies of this genre are filled with pentagrams, puffs of smoke, and strange-looking costumes. But all that content is nominal occultism. What about the seminal – that is, the truly hermeneutical – presence of the occult in Expressionist cinema? That crucial question is addressed in my study.
