"Performances do not occur on stage nor in the auditorium
but in between the two, they are, in effect, exercises
in the creation and occupation of thresholds." [George,
PERFORMANCE EPISTEMOLOGY: AN ESSAY, 1995]
"Cyberspace is a consensual hallucination that these people
have created. Its like, with this equipment, you can agree
to share the same hallucinations. In effect they're
creating a world." [William Gibson in in Rucker, Sirius and
Mu, MONDO 2000 USERS GUIDE TO THE NEW EDGE, 1992]
Like being at the theatre and being on the telephone,
being 'in' cyberspace necessitates the imaginative 'creation
and occupation' of a third, consensually created, liminal
world.
Liminality is a term used by the Belgian folklorist Arnold
van Gennep to denominate the second of three stages in what
he called a "rite of passage". Such rites are found in all
cultures, and are seen as both indicators and vehicles of
transition from one socio-cultural state to another. [Turner,
1979]
The liminal state is a transient time/space for the
consciousness as it travels from one world to another.
This might be from bachelorhood to marriage, the ritual of
the ceremony being the liminal phase when/where one is neither
single or married. Crucially, though, the liminality of
cyberspace differs to Gennep's linear "rite of passage" in
that it suspends the threshold to give the transient
world the primary status (rather than tangible worlds
that define it) that remains 'in-between'.
Two people share a virtual cappuccino in MOO-space .
Whilst there would appear to be only two worlds in
this equation there are in fact three. The meeting of
two time/spaces necessitates the construction of a third.
Cyberspace is neither 'here' in WORLD A, nor 'there' in
WORLD B but 'in-between' under constant negotiation within
the suspended threshold of WORLD C. Both time and space
are ambiguous (but not artificial), the world being 'now'
but 'not now' and 'here' but 'not here'. Without this
time/space created in the imagination of the two people,
communication could not occur for neither would understand
the other. In the limen there are shifting yet implicit
rules and codes which work to create and preserve the
meeting ground.
Like all liminal spaces the cyberspace is a dynamic and
complex one, in a constant state of flux and always in
creative motion, perpetually falling towards both
source-worlds whilst simultaneously constructing itself
through the negotiation of two nodes (WORLD A and B).
It exists between order and chaos, existing and not-existing,
creation and destruction and it is the realm of the
imagination for it is the imagination that constructs it.
"Cyberspace is where you are when you are talking on the
telephone." John Perry Barlow. When we use the
telephone the material reality that is holding a piece
of plastic through which one talks and listens becomes
subsumed by a different, more intangible reality. The
physical world is largely bracketed out by the user who
is 'creating and occupying' a liminal, imagined space
(WORLD C) with another user. The consciousness is
pre-occupied with this creative transaction and has
little awareness of the physical telephone. The experience
itself is the 'reality' and it exists (that is it is
conceptualised, imagined and perceived) in the limen.
Author: .kolu
Date: Jun 6, 1996
REPLY: no idea
wee, wee!
