We have been asked to adopt a daily ritual throughout the course of Performing Technology - preferably something we're already doing and document it as a study in "performance of the self."
The ritual I picked is reading from the scriptures prescribed for the daily Catholic Mass. I have been trying to read and reflect on them daily over a period of some years, but the routine is often broken. By choosing this as my ritual I hoped to increase my discipline in doing the ritual -- and also to gain an insight into how this practice develops for me over an extended period of time.
The idea behind this ritual for me is to more deeply develop a reflective and meditative process that shapes my actions in the world for the better. Prayer, I believe, is a way to do that -- and this ritual is one of many types of prayer.
As I began performing this ritual as part of the class assignment, I immediately began to have hesitations about what I was doing and how it would be received. On one hand, I wanted to perform a ritual that was meaningful to me -- and that I would have the ability to maintain for a long period. On the other hand, I didn't want to perform a ritual that was overly intimate. I also began to wonder whether my "public" performance of this ritual would be authentic to those who know me. I don't check my religious beliefs and practices at the door when I come to ITP, but at the same time, I am not outwardly religious in the context of my studies here.
Although I began documenting this ritual, by voice-blogging, Jamie pointed out in class that it needed to be framed in some sort of context. I've been struggling for the past week to understand how to do that and after wrestling with it again yesterday, I have come to a conclusion that I am going to see out to the end of the semester.
My original process was:
1. Read and reflect on the reading
2. Observe my attraction to a particular word or phrase
3. Post the word or phrase along with the scriptural reference via Jott on my cell phone to a WordPres blog
4. Clean up the voice transcription
Yesterday, I experimented with other ways to contextualize the process -- including some overly complicated methods involving my tablet PC (as you will see several examples posted here). The problem with many of these methods is that they required time consuming setup and post production to accomplish. I was not interested in engaging in a daily production ritual lasting an hour or two in addition to time spent performing the ritual itself.
My new process is:
1. Skim the three (or four depending on the day) readings and pick one to focus on
2. Start to record the ritual (audio and video) as I first read the passage aloud. The context comes from the image of the page as well as my vocal reading of the passage.
3. Reflect -- and once a section of the reading stands out, I zoom in on it.
4. Write the word down on a card as a reminder throughout the day. This also serves as a physical artifact of the process, which is for me an important aspect of the process.
5. Stop recording and upload the video to my blog.