The web isn't commonly thought of as a performative medium, though in actuality, in the very mechanisms of its realization, it very much is. Pages appear in our browsers at the click of a link; it seems instantaneous, though in reality a number of actions are performed to enable this magic to occur. The relation between this dynamic process and the concept of ritual can at times seem tenuous; it is, however, the land that Joseph F. and Donna McElroy inhabit.
Perhaps my favorite McElroy piece of all time is the eco-concious Cult, viewable at http://www.electrichands.com/sketches/cult/ . Cult opens with a scroll of an imaged landscape (the images transform hand silhouettes and portraits of Donna McElroy into geographic formations that glide by in a wind of rust and sunset). Above this strange landscape the silhouette of what appears to be a duck flies; the duck, on mouseOver, reveals itself to be a button, that, when clicked, plays the sound of a gunshot; the user has shot the duck, which action opens an image of Joseph McElroy (sometimes interspersed with images of Donna). The portrait "speaks" to the user, asking her to speak a chant with the McElroys. The chant is about killing; part of it goes, "I am a killer. I am a creator." It also features a binary chant, in which the user is asked to recite with Donna and Joseph a series of ones and zeroes.
I like this piece so much because it blends the natural, the ritual, and the computer. The chant is a ritual of healing, intended to cleanse the user of the act of shooting the bird. This awareness of ancient spirituality, coupled with the realization that this work is being done on a computer, on a network (in common parlance about as far from the natural and the spiritual as one could
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