The Goth and Punk of Steampunk

A few copies of Steampunk Magazine that we have around the community returned to us after having been borrowed (I think for someone to write a dissertation or thesis or some academic type work) for several months. This and that we have been having conversations about Streampunk ever since the party on Saturday has got me musing about things punk, goth and steam. My hesitancy the other day or feeling that asserting a connection between goth and steampunk may be controversial for some was due to some of the iterations of steampunk I have run across on teh interwebs, which to me do not feel very punk or goth, in fact simply feel downright nostalgic. Plus there is that there is a great deal of brown, tan tweed and khaki in steampunk due to the colonist/explorer fashion theme, and the airship/ dirigible pilot etc. At times some interactions seem very far from goth (admitedly there is something analogous between punk and goth, much goth must seem to many a punk as very far from punk and it is true,to my dismay. but I digress thus the parentheses).

So, it was with some joy that I was reminded of subtitle of SteamPunk Magazine: "Putting the Punk back into SteamPunk." Also, that SteamPunk Magazine describes itself as a journal of fashion, art, misapplied technology, and chaos, which is fairly punk and fairly goth as well. Then I was reminded of these articles that have appeared in the magazine: "varieties of the steampunk experience: nostalgic versus maleancholic steampunk", "Green Fairies, Witch -Cradles, and Angel Tongues: Victorian approaches to altered states.", and "Paint it Brass: the intersection of goth and steam."

Interestingly enough in the past few days there has been both talk in the house about the melancholy in this retrieval and recombination given the actually history of industrialization, and about the need to retrieve and recombine and rewrite in ways that subvert the various oppression of the Victorian era some of which remain today or at least we are continuing to reap what was sowed at that time. Such talk is both goth and punk. Certainly Steampunk is its own subculture perhaps broader than goth and certainly punk, but there is that corner of it that does see its roots in goth and punk.

I think my own aesthetics and sensibilities may mean that i am a goth who wanders between punk, steampunk and cyberpunk. But then this is perhaps not surprising for anyone who knows me.

Ships, Airplanes and Denominations

(Edited for clarity 5/19/2009, LEK)
As I was following links in various blogs the other day I ran across this interesting post on conveyance metaphors over at Father T's blog. He is commenting on this article over at Episcopal Life On Line. Father T is commenting on the author's questioning of the ship metaphor and his suggestion that we may need to change our conveyance metaphors to airplane metaphors since few people use ships as a means of travel while most do use airplanes. The questioning of metaphor is a questioning of denominational identity loyalty and the fierceness with which Christians including mainline and liberal Christians hold their opinions.

Given my conversation with the Diocese of Chicago the following observation caught my attention; "The [Pew Forum's]survey points up an interesting countertrend worth pondering. The one bright light of significant growth in the mainline group of churches is – are you sitting down? –"nondenominational.
We might summarize the trends the report identifies in a simple statement: The denominational structures that we inherited, those traditions once central to shaping our identity and sense of community, are answers to a question fewer and fewer people are asking." While I am not found of the label "non-denominational" and we have avoided such terms as non-denominational, inter-denominational, or post-denominational in our self-definition at Reconciler in preference for the label "ecumenical". However, I have to admit that most of those who come through our doors either just for one visit or who end up staying around do really fit the label "non-denominational", and this has influenced how Reconciler has developed as a congregation. Though I was arguing something similar to the above article though it seems that the author like the Canon to the Ordinaary can't quite envision a strong Christian identity that is that is strong but not denominational and also welcoming. We the pastoral team of Reconciler have always sought in working with those who can be called post-denominational or "non-denominational" to offer a strong identity grounded in a broad ecumenical orthodoxy.

I ultimately though find the article heading in a direction I think is mistaken: seeking to find a firm distinction between form and content, through setting in opposition "church" and Gospel. The Gospel should in my opinion produce a particular form, that form may have a certain malleability, but it also can't take on any form. For the Christian faith I insist that message and medium are closely linked. The division of Christianity up into distinct groups we have come to call denominations is it self our failure to truly embody the Gospel, and is to have legitimatized what Paul criticizes the Corinthian church for doing: thinking that they were being faithful by claiming to be primarily identified with one or other of the apostles or itinerant preachers of the Church, which ends up essentially displacing our proper identity with Christ and the universal body of Christ. (1 Cor. 1:10-17) So, I do not believe that denominations need to change and hold more lightly their identities simply because the surrounding culture fails to find value in those identities. Rather, I believe change needs to happen because I see in the surrounding cultures reluctance to embrace denominational identities a true insight into the nature of the church and the Gospel, and thus a recognition that denominational-ism compromises that nature.

Steampunk

Tonight we are having a birthday party for two members of the community: a steampunk birthday party. several of the members of the community have in the past year begun to take more interest in Steampunk. This feels very familiar to me because at least in terms of fashion and aesthetic I have long encountered elements of Steampunk in the Goth scene. At some point I'd like to discover what the connection if any between these Steampunk aesthetic and fashion elements in the Goth scene and the Steampunk literature. I wonder also if some would take issue with my connecting Steampunk and Goth. Certainly it is becoming a scene and sub-culture all its own. However, Goth often embraces and encompasses scenes and sub-cultures that are also separate from the Goth scene. The Fetish scene is one that immediately comes to mind, as does cyberpunk. I have heard there is now a Steampunk club or bar in LA. So, at least in LA it perhaps has moved beyond the goth scene though it seems to me that those into Steampunk in Chicago at least go to goth clubs.

So, this goth is very pleased that his Hippy house mate and Quaker house mate are into Steampunk aesthetic, it feels quite familiar and I have been seeing Steampunk fashion and aesthetic in Goth clubs for years.

priestly Goth Preaching chronicles, XIV

Last night I met with someone who has come to Reconciler a couple of times in the past few weeks. We had a good conversation. We talked about where we each have lived, how we came to our current vocation, film, churches he has attended, and the community and Reconciler of course. Two things struck me as we each returned home from Kopi Cafe: We did not talk directly about God and I did not talk about Reconciler except in terms of how it has effected my life. He talked about the leaders and people who had been in churches he attended - talked about how they impacted his life or their quirks from which he learned personally. He didn't ask me about our vision, or ecumenism, and I didn't try to get him to tell me what he thought of the church or what attracted him etc. In other words we had simple conversation that one has when you have recently met someone and you have the chance to sit down with them to get to know them better. It just so happened that the reason we were having this conversation was because he had come to the church and I was the pastor of the church he has started attending.

This does authentically reflect my sense of faith and God and life, they are simply intertwined and it isn't always needful to make it all explicit and overt. Church is part of life and is about relationship. Yet, even I can forget this sometimes. There are pressures, for church to be part of life there are structures to maintain, and if no one comes or shows up, then there isn't really and church. These pressures at times can on one hand cause me to do too much, to push when I should just let things be, but on the other hand it can keep me from taking the initiative or offering something. I do this because I am thinking about church in terms of finding ways to get people to come or to get people to stay once they come. One way I am wondering if I do too little is in the area of contacting people after they visit and leave us contact information. It has been our practice to e-mail or mail a letter of welcome to our visitors and then wait to call them until they have come back again. I don't want to seem pushy, yet if I truly believe that church is part of life and is about relationship, then someone who has visited us has shared a significant moment with us, and to simply let that pass with a short note may not acknowledge all that might be there. There are a number of reasons someone may have come on that Sunday, taking the extra effort to call and offer to meet with a person after visiting communicates perhaps a caring for the person who came and for that moment whatever it may have meant to the person to the congregation. I don't know if such a policy will mean that more people who visit us will end up returning and staying, but it may make entering the congregation a little less daunting and a little more like beginning a relationship than entering an organization disconnected from life.

Worship and Media Arts: Preistlygoth Preaching Chronicles XIII

As I wrote on Reconciler's blog recently I have been thinking about and playing with liturgy. I have also been doing a good bit of research on liturgy and worship. The use of Twitter in worship has been in the news which was brought to my attention by Tripp and Eugene Cho, has been posting on this as well. The particular ways the article highlights about how these initial attempts to use Twitter in worship is perhaps understandable given the context, and perhaps is no different that services where in prayer everyone speaks at once or everyone prays in tongues at once. I have been in these services, not something I find particularly worshipful. Yet I could see that it might fit certain charismatic and free church liturgical styles.

I don't think that the use of Twitter during a church service is always objectionable. There are points in worship where individual response may enrich worship: at Reconciler people respond and comment (from time to time) on a Scripture passage as it is read, and we do have an opportunity for people to respond and discuss the sermon. The use of Twitter could be an expansion or another way to encourage that sort of engagement. Though, I do wonder about focus and all. However,the question of the use of Twitter at least in the way highlighted in the above article first requires that a congregation have a multimedia projection system run by a computer. Which means some form of media art is probably being used or at least the congregation is accustomed to things projected on screens or walls during worship.

People could twitter all they wanted in church at Immanuel and Reconciler, and it wouldn't effect the services themselves all that much, because we have no means for those to be shared for all to see. There isn't any means of projection let alone a computer run projection system. For Easter 2008 Immanuel did bring in a liturgist whose focus is on media arts and we had art projected on a screen during the scripture readings of the Easter Vigil. It ended up for the three congregations to be an interesting novelty but the process and end result Eileen Crowley brought didn't quite work for us. I have never be clear as to why it didn't work, though there were a number of things at work. Members of Reconciler weren't all that interested, a few were opposed to the idea. So there ended up being little participation from Reconciler. I think this frustrated and flabbergasted Crowley a little bit because Reconciler's demographic "should" have been all into what she was doing and we weren't. Crowley did get involvement from a number of members of Immanuel some of whom were rarely involved in the planning of parts of worship services, One of whom this year offered up a series of photograph montage of sunsets that were used in publicity and on the web and displayed on the walls of the sanctuary at the end of lent and through Holy week. So, it is not that what Crawly brought and did with us had no impact. However, the media art,for the Vigil in the end simply was an addition that seemed unconnected to the liturgy, it did not illuminate what we were doing and we did not feel the need for it to communicate what the Vigil was about. We got along just fine this year without it. What was produced ended up being something to be viewed simply and I am not sure the form the media art took in the end encouraged participation in the liturgy itself, or even depended our sense of the readings.

Since January I have had the chance, and in a sense have been required, to play with Reconciler's liturgy. I have played with different liturgies, specifically the Lima liturgy, and am exploring rearranging the space to encourage and require more movement in the service itself. (I have written a reflection on this process here. As I have been thinking about our liturgy and our space and doing studies on the liturgy I began to think back on Eileen Crawly and "Media art". In theory and and for certain styles of worship Crowley's recommendations make sense. Crowley's work probably helps churches incorporate "media art" well in their worship. If you are already using projections following Eileen Crowley's suggestions and methodology would get you to move beyond merely projecting things on the wall. Also it seems to me that if you had gone far enough along to use canned "art" as backdrop to projecting lyrics on the screen the following Crowley would mean beauty might actually make its way into these projections. However, in terms of services like the Easter Vigil and the worship of Immanuel and Reconciler Crowleys method fails to follow her own advice because she keeps insisting that "media art" is something one inserts either poorly or well into the liturgy. When here principles claim that good media art emerges out of the liturgy and should support flow and illuminate the liturgical action of the congregation.

I think this contradiction is in part due to a failure to see projection technology essential to "media art" as a tool with analogy to the book, or at least the way the book has been used for liturgical purposes. In some sense computerized projections offers something analogous to what the liturgical books and prayer books offered: a means to give consistency and order to worship and to allow the people to follow and respond and participate. At Reconciler and Immanuel and many other places we have moved from the book sort of by each Sunday printing out most if not all of the service of worship in a booklet produced each Sunday using desk top publishing technology. However it seems to me that what we print out can just as well be projected and displayed on monitors or screens. Now this mere technological and practical use of projection does not fit the full definition of "media art", Yet if we think of our prayer books and hymnals etc. as also things that are designed to be aesthetically pleasing to use, and if we remember that liturgical books were once illuminated, and some hymnals and worship books do continue to use art to illuminate the text, then we can begin to see the possibility of "media art" as a non paper bound way to direct and allow people to enter and participate in the liturgy. Incidentally this is one of Crowley's principles of appropriate "media art" yet her language talks about "media art as something one inserts into the liturgy. this fails to see the analogy between "media art" and the function of liturgical books as the recording of the actions of the liturgy in an accessible and artistic form.

My thought is that if we began at the texts of the liturgy and projected them using the current technology, a type of illumination of that projected text could take place in the ways that Crowley recommends but it wouldn't be inserting anything but it would be emerging out of the liturgy itself and hopefully reflect the engagement of the congregation with the liturgy. Nothing would need to be changed except the technology used to let people know what was happening and when to say what and what to sing, so that we could do it together in corporate worship. In other words Media art should illuminate the liturgy: the speech and action of our worship. This would mean that we wouldn't be trying to copy or replicate what museums or rock shows do with media arts, but that it would be what the liturgy itself calls for. However, first step would be to get out of our books and project them on walls screens or from monitors in our worship spaces. Now that will also take some thinking, and may not work for every worship space since most of us who would take this approach to "media art" are not in churches where projection was envisioned as a use of the space, yet I bet with some creativity and funds (maybe not much more than a whole set of new hymnals and bibles etc., I don't know I haven't priced such things) my guess is that most spaces could accommodate some form of projection that would not obscure the architecture and so that all could see the projection. In this sense it isn't about contemporary or traditional or creating a multi-media worship experience that mimics rock shows or museum exhibits. We would add nothing to the liturgy just use a piece of technology to help us know where we are in the liturgy and to illuminate what we are doing at any point in time.

Social Media breakfast and a future post

(Edited for clarity 5/9/2009, 10:30 pm, LEK)
In a few minutes I will start the Swedish (German to my father), pancakes I cook each week for Holy Trinity's weekly community breakfast and meeting. I am working on a post on the "media arts" in worship, but this is some emerging ideas and I want to presents something more or less coherent, and I am critiquing various approaches and I want to be fair to what I critique so it may not be posted for awhile.
In its place some more thoughts on Social media before I start the pancakes:

This is further reflection on Tripp's recent post on "social media" ie. Twitter and Facebook(FB), and the conversation that it generated on Tripp's blog and over at Eugene Cho's blog. Also, Steve Hays has an interesting post on the use of Social media by the church

At the moment I am going to rant a little about how the term "social" is being used. Tripp asked if FB and Twitter more social than blogging. Speaking this way of both in Tripp's question and in calling Twitter and FB "social media" is using "social" as the differing marker. Doing so seems to narrow greatly the meaning of social. This narrowing seems to restrict "social" to being sociable. I would agree that Twitter and FB are more sociable media. In a sense they create an unending virtual social, as in a church social or social hour. However, "social" can simply denote being about society and ones community in a generalized sort of way. I would argue social is about being apart of creating and maintaining the larger social fabric. Which is what the media is for in terms of larger and extended groups of people. Now granted that the "traditional" media of newspapers, TV and Radio (and even blogs) all are limited in terms of interactivity and ability to be sociable. In fact these media aren't really about being sociable at all. They are about spreading news, information and/or an environment conducive to knowledgeable or at least informed communities. One may say they are also about exposing a large group of people to things that may not have become informed about and thus expands there sense of their community and understanding of the society in which they live. Granted we all know the limits of these media. And Twitter and FB don't have these same limits. I am sure Twitter and FB have their limits, one being sustained and in depth discourse. They are by nature and perhaps design surface level communications, like most things called "socials". Now I happen to think that Twitter and FB serve a wonderful function, they allow for a highly mobile and disjointed culture to recreate or maintain networks and community over time and space which is difficult when we may have friends scattered all over the country or even the world. Twitter and FB don't create community we the users create community via these sociable tools. They are sociable technology allowing us to create a permanent and virtual social hour. This has its good points it also like with all technological advances has its negative sides. But all media are social, and Twitter and FB do not create community but they allow us to be more sociable (not necessarily a good thing) and through this allow us to create community in ways impossible before.