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

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.

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Lila Moore

Conference

Publication date: July 2019

Publication date (Print): July 2019

Pages: 155-161

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[0001]Cybernetic Futures Inst. Dingley Place, London, UK

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/EVA2019.30

SO-VID: b4710e92-722d-40b8-9896-54242028d282

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: Proceedings of EVA London 2019

Conference acronym: EVA 2019

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Conference location: London, UK

Conference date: 8 - 11 July 2019

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: Electronic Visualisation and the Arts

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1477-9358 BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/EVA2019.30

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

REFERENCES

R. Ascott 2003 Weaving the shamanic web: art and technoetics in the bio-telematic domain R. AscottE. A. Shanken Telematic Embrace Visionary Theories of Art, Technology and Consciousness University of California Press Berkley, Los Angeles and London
Cave of Forgotten Dreams 2010 [film] Directed by Werner Herzog Germany, France
V.A. ClarkM. HodsonC. Neiman 1988 The Legend of Maya Deren: A Documentary Biography and Collected Works New York Anthology Film Archives, Film Culture
M. Deren 1946 An Anagram ofIdeas on Art, Form and Film NY The Alicat Book Shop Press
T. Geis 2013 Death by amnesia: Maya Deren, Egypt, and “racial” memory Dada/Surrealism, [e-journal] 19 1 https://ir.uiowa.edu/dadasur/vol19/iss1/11/ retrieved 2 February 2019 )
A. A. Maravelia 2003 Cosmic space and archetypal time: depictions of the sky-goddess nut in three royal tombs of the new kingdom and her relation to the milky way Göttinger Miszellen 197 55 72
A. Maravelia 2017 Smart informatics & Egyptology: a modern inter-disciplinary forum studying an ancient culture of pre-& proto-scientific logistics & intelligence Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Information Systems (ICICIS) Cairo, Egypt 5 7 2017 11 20 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/mostRecentIssue.jsp?punumber=8250944 retrieved 2 February 2019 )
Meshes of the Afternoon 1943 [film] Directed by Maya Deren USA
L. Moore 2018a The shaman of cybernetic futures: art, ritual and transcendence in fields of the networked mind Cybernetics & Human Knowing 25 2-3 119 141
L. Moore 2018b Technoetic aesthetics of revelation and transcendence – the horse in the mind, paper presented at the Apocalypse in Art: The Creative Unveiling, CenSAMM Symposia Series Centre for the Critical Study of Apocalyptic and Millenarian Movements, Panacea Charitable Trust Bedford, UK 28-29 June 2018 https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/201810.0040/v1/ retrieved 2 February 2019 )
Nefertari: Journey to Eternity 2018 [VR] [360 film] Experius VR USA Curiosity Stream
W. K. SimpsonR. K. Ritner 2003 The literature of ancient Egypt: an anthology of stories, instructions, stelae, autobiographies, and poetry New Haven and London Yale University Press
The Met (2015) The Artist Project: Sarah sze https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnmSkwzfnc retrieved 2 February 2019 )
The Tomb of Perneb at The Metropolitan Museum of Art 2011 [video] Directed and Produced by Christopher Noey https://www.metmuseum.org/metmedia/video/collections/egyptian/tomb-of-perneb retrieved 2 February 2019 )
Tombs and Monuments of Egypt 2018 [VR] [360 film] Experius VR USA Curiosity Stream
Michael Tucker 1992 Dreaming with open eyes: the shamanic spirit in twentieth-century art and culture London Aquarian/Thorsons, Harper Collins Publishers
M. VosmeerB. Schouten 2014 Interactive cinema: engagement and interaction International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling Singapore 3-6 November 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland 140 147 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/290303470_Interactive_Cinema_Engagement_and_Interaction retrieved 2 February 2019 )

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[1] R. Ascott 2003 Weaving the shamanic web: art and technoetics in the bio-telematic domain R. AscottE. A. Shanken Telematic Embrace Visionary Theories of Art, Technology and Consciousness University of California Press Berkley, Los Angeles and London

[2] Cave of Forgotten Dreams 2010 [film] Directed by Werner Herzog Germany, France

[3] V.A. ClarkM. HodsonC. Neiman 1988 The Legend of Maya Deren: A Documentary Biography and Collected Works New York Anthology Film Archives, Film Culture

[4] M. Deren 1946 An Anagram ofIdeas on Art, Form and Film NY The Alicat Book Shop Press

[5] T. Geis 2013 Death by amnesia: Maya Deren, Egypt, and “racial” memory Dada/Surrealism, [e-journal] 19 1 https://ir.uiowa.edu/dadasur/vol19/iss1/11/ retrieved 2 February 2019 )

[6] A. A. Maravelia 2003 Cosmic space and archetypal time: depictions of the sky-goddess nut in three royal tombs of the new kingdom and her relation to the milky way Göttinger Miszellen 197 55 72

[7] A. Maravelia 2017 Smart informatics & Egyptology: a modern inter-disciplinary forum studying an ancient culture of pre-& proto-scientific logistics & intelligence Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Information Systems (ICICIS) Cairo, Egypt 5 7 2017 11 20 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/mostRecentIssue.jsp?punumber=8250944 retrieved 2 February 2019 )

[8] Meshes of the Afternoon 1943 [film] Directed by Maya Deren USA

[9] L. Moore 2018a The shaman of cybernetic futures: art, ritual and transcendence in fields of the networked mind Cybernetics & Human Knowing 25 2-3 119 141

[10] L. Moore 2018b Technoetic aesthetics of revelation and transcendence – the horse in the mind, paper presented at the Apocalypse in Art: The Creative Unveiling, CenSAMM Symposia Series Centre for the Critical Study of Apocalyptic and Millenarian Movements, Panacea Charitable Trust Bedford, UK 28-29 June 2018 https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/201810.0040/v1/ retrieved 2 February 2019 )

[11] Nefertari: Journey to Eternity 2018 [VR] [360 film] Experius VR USA Curiosity Stream

[12] W. K. SimpsonR. K. Ritner 2003 The literature of ancient Egypt: an anthology of stories, instructions, stelae, autobiographies, and poetry New Haven and London Yale University Press

[13] The Met (2015) The Artist Project: Sarah sze https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnmSkwzfnc retrieved 2 February 2019 )

[14] The Tomb of Perneb at The Metropolitan Museum of Art 2011 [video] Directed and Produced by Christopher Noey https://www.metmuseum.org/metmedia/video/collections/egyptian/tomb-of-perneb retrieved 2 February 2019 )

[15] Tombs and Monuments of Egypt 2018 [VR] [360 film] Experius VR USA Curiosity Stream

[16] Michael Tucker 1992 Dreaming with open eyes: the shamanic spirit in twentieth-century art and culture London Aquarian/Thorsons, Harper Collins Publishers

[17] M. VosmeerB. Schouten 2014 Interactive cinema: engagement and interaction International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling Singapore 3-6 November 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland 140 147 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/290303470_Interactive_Cinema_Engagement_and_Interaction retrieved 2 February 2019 )

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