Throughout
the world ancient temples, churches, mosques, the shrines
represent a sacred space, which is clearly differentiated
from profane and ordinary space. The sacred in-built spaces
are a gateway to the high heavens beyond the earth sphere
as well as inner depths of the heart. These portals serve
as a sanctuary to unfold one’s unity with the Divine,
the higher and pure forces of life. The sacred space provides
the stage for cognition, contemplation, emotion, and rituals
of worship in which the devotee unites with the divine,
hence function as a center of transformation.
Mirroring
the functions of the temples, churches and mosques at the
scale of the city, sacred altars are found in private homes.
They symbolize the microcosm and imbue the home with a presence
of the symbolic signs of the divine. On the body of the
devotee, amulets, jewelry and clothing provide reflections
of divinity. All these outer representations and spaces,
the sacred altars in the home, the portable craft objects
represent various "vehicles" of touching the purest
levels of the heart. The images and settings provide supports
for the devotee to undertake an inner journey into knowledge
and into the heart. Today in our technology-centric world,
distances have been reduced and speed has been dramatically
increased. There has been a scaling of Man's outward reach,
but perennial question of life, death and meaning haunt
modern man. The quest for wholeness, harmony, and silence
still remains. The technological progress, largely based
on rational and intellectual thought, has come at the human
cost of the heart. Mankind has become fragmented. The mind
and the heart are disconnected. Due to the quick pace of
modern life, man loses sight of the larger ideals of the
divine, becomes disconnected, loses identity and lives with
a limited knowledge of the self.
Modern
man too longs for a daily connection to the visions of perfection
and idealism. He longs for a life-affirming perspective
and the immediacy of spiritual experience. He needs to see
himself as a potential divine being. Hence a problem of
spirituality for modern Man is one of the constant remembrances
of the higher goals, and developing the "heart"
to create well-being and harmony in daily life.
We
will explore tools for people to connect live, and in real-time,
to spatially distributed sacred spaces, using the affordances
of modern, networked, computing technology. Through a live
connection to the spiritually charged spaces people can
connect virtually to rituals and performances and connect
to larger planetary rhythms. . We plan to explore electronic-based
take-home memory aids in the form of amulets, craft objects
that connect people to sacred centers. Instead of creating
separation between the sacred and the profane, and given
that Modern man finds himself interacting with information
delivery devices a great majority of his time, we wish to
integrate the presence of the divine in day to day aspects
of life. |
