At this moment, NFT is in the fifth layer: Creator economy. However, my project is more relevant with the 7th layer, using metaverse technology to enhance the experience. Some ritual that contains social attribute can be worth experimenting.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday outlined his vision for the future of the social media giant, formalising the company’s focus on the metaverse.
In a presentation at the company’s annual Connect conference, Zuckerberg announced the company is rebranding as Meta and detailed how his company aims to build a new version of the internet.
“We believe the metaverse will be the successor to the mobile internet, we’ll be able to feel present – like we’re right there with people no matter how far apart we actually are,” he said.
Metaverse
The metaverse is where the physical and digital worlds come together. It is a space where digital representations of people – avatars – interact at work and play, meeting in their office, going to concerts and even trying on clothes.
At the centre of this universe will be virtual reality, a digital world that you can already enter via Facebook’s Oculus VR headsets. It will also include augmented reality, a sort of step back from VR where elements of the digital world are layered on top of reality – think Pokémon Go or Facebook’s recent smart glasses tie-up with Ray-Ban.
My understanding:
Metaverse is an immersive world based on digital technology. Through its concept, I believe it can add more interactive ideas in my project.
Why ‘rituals’?
My thinking was set in motion by those who, knowing I was a parish minister for many years, asked me for advice about ceremonies and celebrations. They wanted words to use at graduations, funerals, and the welcoming of children. They inquired about grace at family meals, the reaffirmation of wedding vows, and ways to heal wounds suffered in personal conflict. People requested help with the rituals of solitude, such as meditation, prayer, and contemplation…
Rituals do not always involve words, occasions, officials, or an audience. Rituals are often silent, solitary, and self-contained. The most powerful rites of passage are reflective — when you look back on your life again and again, paying attention to the rivers you have crossed and the gates you have opened and walked on through, the thresholds you have passed over.
I see ritual when people sit together silently by an open fire.
Remembering.
As human beings have remembered for thousands and thousands of years.
Robert Fulghum From Beginning to end: The rituals of our lives, Chapter Once
My understanding：
I combined this custom as an electronic artwork with the new Internet art NFT platform.
Potential stakeholder
Age: 50
Occupation: Market manager
Description:
Chun has a habit of visiting temples. Due to the Covid situation, she can’t visit it as a daily routine. I interviewed her with my intervention idea and ask her for her feedback.
According to the audience’s feedback, most of them don’t appreciate the way of visiting temples online, and it already had a lot of apps in this area.
And she mentioned as she is a person who has been growing up and living in China, it’s important for her to know what people around other countries know and think about the Chinese culture so that she can know more about her culture and her cultural self-identity. So she suggested: ‘ The first thing to do to enhance the culture self-identity is to show others the cultural content you own and cherish actively. ‘
I researched some meditation apps and online worship apps.
I want to try to explore how to use visual methods to upgrade the process of people visiting and worshipping online.
Based on this, I will start with the app logo.
My first idea is to combine temple in my logo to see how it is.
Qualitative data
The Chinese Buddhist Association issued the “Notice on the cessation of related activities during the epidemic” on 30 January 2020.
When I did an interview with a middle-aged woman, she told me her concerns: She is a housewife and usually goes to the temple every day to burn incense and worship Buddha for the whole family. During the epidemic, the temples are closed one after another. She feels that she has lost the sense of security in reality and faith, so she is very unaccustomed and anxious.
I realize now in China, many people are facing this situation. In China, almost all the cities have their temples.
According to a report from Phoenix Expo, as religion and folk beliefs are vaguely defined in China, it is difficult to have a consistent answer. But according to a survey conducted by Horizon early in 2014, 120 million people over the age of 16 in China claim that they do not believe in a specific religion but believe in the existence of gods, Buddhas, or ghosts. 141 million believe in the god of wealth, 145 million believe in Feng Shui, and 206 million recognize their ancestors and gods exist. Not to mention that there is a custom of going to temples to worship Buddha on the first and fifteenth day of the new year.
So I started to pay attention to issues related to temples under the epidemic.
【 Rrsearch question 】
In the digital age, how to strengthen cultural self identity through the introduction of a placebo that challenges combining with the traditional esoteric elements.
In this stage, my project needs to find out what is the challenge ( data& fact ) and what is the solution ( intervention ). During this tutorial, David and I discussed about research tool and methodology, especially data collecting tools.
We talked about Qulitative data and Quantitative data.
My understanding here is:
Qualitative data is more about feeling and reason, eg. interview to focused group; Quantitative data is about fact and figure, eg. survey
【 Traditional esoteric elements 】
I defined elements to three things:
However, according to the defination of ritual: Ritual is a series of actions or types of behaviour regularly and invariably followed by someone, eg. visit to Joy became a ritual.
So I fianlly change my research question to:
In the digital age, how to strengthen self cultural identity through the introduction of a placebo that challenges combining with the traditional ritual.
【 Expert 】
The point of research is you become an expert
The interview is evidence of engaging with expert, to know something you don’t know before. Or make an academic argument.
Ask experts how they would test the question/create an intervention—strength research.
Find out questions through stakeholders/audience prove other people thinking
In the digital age, how to strengthen self cultural identity through the introduction of a placebo that challenges combining with the traditional esoteric elements.
In my research question, the words ‘esoteric elements’ needs to be furder defined, so I attempt to describe them from three aspects:
– superstitious objects
– divination
– ritual
Based on these three descriptions, I tried to design three different questionnaires and want to see the results to make my final definition.
Superstitious object
Divination