Cpetruz1’s Weblog

I want to focus on one of Erikson’s quotes that really struck me as to the  meaning behind his essay: “I have suggested that the most basic quality of human life, hope, is the inner strength which emerges unbroken from early familiarity and mutuality and which provides for man a sense (or a promise) of a personal and universal continuum”. To start with, he looks at a phase of life that tends to be forgotten as the years pass by: infancy. In our society, we focus on money and time, two qualities that prove insignificant to the youngest generations. We are always so busy looking forward to the future and what we can accomplish that we tend to forget the beginning, the events that actually helped shaped us into the people that will be stepping into this hopefully bright future. Yet when you really think about it, everything that happens in our adult lives is merely an adaptation of our infancy. For example, Erikson talks about the stage of separation by abandonment, which we must prevent by surrounding ourselves by the familiar. This sounds strikingly familiar to an infant and its mother: children fear abandonment, as they are raised constantly surrounded by their parents-how often is an infant’s first word some version of mom or dad? Both infants and adults need this reassurance in the familiar, and I feel that religious rituals provide this to adults. Don’t rituals often include repeated activities that would therefore be very familiar to the people partaking in them? Going back to the quote, Erikson claims that hope for ourselves-hope in a greater power-emerges from this sense of the familiar, a promise of a “personal and universal continuum”. What I think Erikson is trying to say is that what we experience in our infancy simply becomes a continuous, repeated cycle-we have the same fears of abandonment as an adult that we do as an infant, just on a different level. Therefore, if we keep having these repeated cycles of feelings and fears, they become familiar to us, enabling us to achieve the most basic quality of human life: hope. 

In her article, Karen Moltenbrey focuses on a key problem Ron Howard faced when he decided to make “The Da Vinci Code”: how to depict the Church of Saint-Sulpice. The famous Parisian church is a critical visual and narrative aspect of the novel, yet it would be nearly impossible to bring this same description onto the screen. While in other movies, there is the option of shooting at a different location and simply claiming it is the one mentioned, the same could not be done with Saint-Sulpice. Because it is such a recognizable and described church, anyone who had visited it would immediately be able to tell if a double was being used. Plus, there was never even a possibility that a film crew would be granted permission to film in the actual church. However, effects supervisor on the film, Bickerton, had previously worked on another film requiring special assistance as far as effects were concerned. He called in two talented effects artists, Breakspear and Rainmaker, who were able to devise another plan. Rainmaker went into the church and took hundreds of pictures (the article emphasized that photography is allowed within Saint-Sulpice). The images were then used to create a 3D computer generated version of Saint-Sulpice. Even when the effects artists reached the problem of how to make the image appear as though it is night, the CG artists used alpha channels, maps, and controls to grade and rebuild a nighttime version of the composition. A set was actually created on which to film the scenes-it was just enhanced the the CG replica of the church. The entire process used  to digitally create Saint-Sulpice really makes me question the idea of sacred space. The movie was not filmed in the actual church, but was rather a created replica of the space. Therefore, I think a fairly obvious question comes to mind: is the church still sacred? The greater issue behind all of this is that this isn’t the only digitally created area of worship; take Second Life, for instance. The churches and cathedrals within this world were created in a manner similar to that of Saint-Sulpice in “The Da Vinci Code”. People worship in these churches as though they are physically attending a service-this is the same in the case of actual online churches. I wonder: what actually makes a space sacred? Is it the person who built it? Because if that’s the case, then all churches are sacred, digital or not, for they are all created by man. If it’s the activities that occur within a space that make it sacred, then any form of building could be considered sacred. And one final question still comes to mind: in “The Da Vinci Code”, Dan Brown manipulates the facts of Saint-Sulpice with fiction, so can the space still be sacred if it doesn’t actually depict the real church? 

I feel that Warren Sack and Jill Walker look at the phenomenon of online conversation in two completely different manners, yet there are similarities within their arguments. In both VLSC’s and Walker’s interaction with Online Caroline, the individual is able to communicate their thoughts and feelings with other people-every person has a voice. However, the difference between the two articles is whether or not that voice is actually heard. Sack emphasizes the importance of reciprocating with others; you don’t just visit one of these conversations to talk at people, but rather to talk to them, to generate a continuous flow of ideas. When this happens, everyone is heard and actual conversation takes place. However, Walker looks at the way conversations can actually prove to be simulations, and the way these simulations can “play” you. With Online Caroline, Walker would try to converse and state her opinions and ideas, yet they didn’t actually matter in the greater scheme of the simulation. She even created a second identity completely opposite of the one she had already established online, yet discovered that “Caroline” would still send her a generic response, regardless of what she actually had to say.   I think Online Caroline is a perfect example of how the level of interactivity on the part of the participant can actually determine how real they find a game or website to be. In Sack’s article, he discusses the interaction between actual people online-how they use this new format as merely another means of communicating ideas. However, Walker looks at a newer concept: interacting with something that was before only ever used as a means of entertainment. I mean, there are multiple times I have read a book or watched a movie and yelled out loud at a character for something they were doing. It’s hard to believe that we have reached an age where it is actually possible to interact with these once-fictional characters. I say once-fictional because I believe that as soon as we begin to interact with them, they are no longer fictional to us. Walker herself even addresses her level of investment in what happens to Caroline, despite the fact that her voice isn’t actually heard. It’s easy to see how a website like Online Caroline can become an instant community-it’s not just about the interaction with Caroline, but the relationship that may develop between her followers. I see it as the same as fans of a television show: each individual will interact with Meredith Grey in their own way, yet everyone’s mutual interaction and investment in the show ties them together into their own community.