Journal articles on the topic 'Nondenominational'

Abstract The future development of church membership or religious indifference is currently unpredictable. What’s more, the author argues that this perspective is of no relevance to Religious Education with nondenominational students. Instead, he advocates a “transconfessional” approach to Religious Education, in which the students’ confession or formal membership of a church doesn’t count. Thus, he rather looks at how RE can help pupils to consciously choose or decline a religious lifestyle. In this context, the author also points out that all thought on how to work with nondenominationals in RE classes can resort to the past years’ rich experience with ecumenical and interreligious learning.

The article analyzes the modern forms of relations between the state and religion: a theocracy, a state religion, confessional structure, political nondenominational state resurgent religious influence on government. Particular attention is paid to the ways and methods of solving the state-religious issues (the war between and within religious conflicts, overcoming discord in the interpretation of the canons and dogmas, flirting with clerics). The analysis is based on a broad historical context. Finally, it analyzes the reality of the interaction between religion and political power in modern Russia and the reaction of the population to these relationships.

This article discusses the life and work of the Roman Catholic Charismatic Peter Hocken. It shows how, over many publications and in a series of writings directed both to Catholics and to the wider Christian world, he has constructed a theological understanding of the outpouring of the Spirit in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The purpose of the Spirit in denominational and nondenominational streams turns on the key role of Messianic Jews and is essentially eschatological and ecumenical as it prepares for the return of Christ. The article also includes a list of Hocken’s publications on Pentecostalism, charismatic renewal, and Israel.

The Emerging Church grew in prominence in the United States in the 1990’s as a reaction to seeker-sensitive approaches of nondenominational evangelical megachurches. These megachurches are known for the commodification of religion and the conception of church members as consumers, and are thus prime examples of the neoliberalization of the American religious landscape. In contrast, the Emerging Church opposes institutionalized and neoliberalized religious practices and structures, instead emphasizing local and contextual organization and practice as a basis for more “authentically Christian” lives. Nevertheless, the Emerging Church itself displays characteristics of neoliberalization, which I disclose using Wendy Brown’s definition of neoliberal rationality. This raises the question whether a lived critique of neoliberalization is possible in the late modern era.

A notorious hate group purchased anti-Muslim advertisements on buses operated by the San Francisco Municipal Transit Authority. The San Francisco Human Rights Commission engaged members of the Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian communities in a photovoice project to explore the cultural identities, challenges, and resilience of community members coping with discrimination. The project provided a case example of photovoice as counterspeech and demonstrated the way in which counterspeech empowers affected communities to push back against harmful and threatening expression with resilience, cultural pride, and self-determination. Women and men in the photovoice participant group represented a wide range of backgrounds and ethnicities: Palestinian, Indian, Pakistani, and Lebanese. Religious affiliations included Muslim, Sikh, Christian, nondenominational, and agnostic. The exhibit was presented to the public in three major venues and was made available online.

The ArgumentYehuda Halevi's Kuzari was written in response to the challenge posed to Judaism by a highly spiritual, nondenominational philosophy. Science, especially that embodied in the Hellenistic heritage, was a major component of philosophy; thus, if for no other reason than to make Judaism a serious competitor, Halevi had to show that the Jewish tradition as well possessed a body of scientific knowledge. The superiority of the Jewish teachings was demonstrated chiefly by appeal to the criteria of tradition, consensus, and authority, which, in Halevi's judgement, were in practice the criteria most influential in deciding scientific opinion. Despite the rather unique setting for the book, and the wide range of stances Halevi develops, the Kuzari was rather quickly and smoothly absorbed into the mainstream of Jewish religious thought.

This article examines the practice and meanings of the new veiling and of Islamization more generally for young Muslim Javanese women in the new middle class. Drawing on eight months of ethnographic research in the Central Java city of Yogyakarta in 1999 and three subsequent one-month visits during 2001, 2002, and 2003, I explore the social and religious attitudes of female students at two of Yogyakarta's leading centers of higher education: Gadjah Mada University, a nondenominational state university, and the nearby Sunan Kalijaga National Islamic University. The ethnographic and life-historical materials discussed here underscore that the new veiling is neither a traditionalist survival nor an antimodernist reaction but rather a complex and sometimes ambiguous effort by young Muslim women to reconcile the opportunities for autonomy and choice offered by modern education with a heightened commitment to the profession of Islam.

The college accreditation movement that arose at the turn of the twentieth century had an important antecedent in the Society for the Promotion of Collegiate and Theological Education at the West. Founded in 1843, this nondenominational philanthropy aspired to direct the development of higher education by dispersing eastern funds to Protestant colleges that met its standards for instruction, administration, and piety. For all its ambitions, the Society did not always offer dependable or disinterested supervision. Its relationships with Knox College and Iowa College (now Grinnell) exposed its shortcomings. Coinciding with the rising sectional conflict over slavery, the activities of these institutions forced the regulatory association to engage in the very brand of ecclesiastical politics it had vowed to transcend. This article shows how institutional resistance and church rivalry helped delay the growth of accreditation until the turn of the twentieth century, when secular organizations took up the reins of regulation.

AbstractTaking its subtitle from a theological college course description, this paper examines the intersections of theological and anthropological ideas of culture, as seen through the eyes of Kenyan evangelists and American missionaries. One of the key concepts developed in the course, and in the broader program of this U.S.-funded nondenominational church in East Africa, is that understanding culture is key to learning and unlocking the spiritual 'personalities' (both godly and satanic) involved in spiritual warfare. Both Kenyans and Americans conceive of warfare as the struggle between secular and Christian worldviews and consider education to be one of the strongest weapons needed to win the battle. However, where U.S. teachers focus on animism and world-religious conflict as evidence of lingering immorality and ungodliness, Kenyans focus on American ethnocentrism and xenophobia as evidence of ongoing cultural misunderstandings and injustice. Analysis is based on examination of mission records and on field research conducted in Nairobi and western Kenya.

The extremes of sectarian fanaticism and Machiavellian relativism were both prominent in Shakespeare's day. It was an era of religious strife, incipient nationalism, growing monarchical absolutism, and also of “liberated” Machiavellian cynicism and “will to power”—no “golden age” of moral certainty and equanimity. Somehow, the literary genius of Shakespeare not only avoided these extremes or heresies but implicitly or explicitly critiqued them all, providing a permanent legacy of vivid moral commentary, exhortation, and illustration. This legacy has had an incalculably great ethical influence on the thought, sensibility, and education of English-speaking peoples across four centuries and several continents. Particularly in its nondenominational critique of relativism, it is a precious educational resource that eloquently affirms the fundamental reality of ethics for the person who would be truly human. Ordered liberty is always imperilled by its counterfeit and competitor—licentious libertinism. Shakespeare loved the former and hated the latter, with enduring effect.

Many scholars of religion who teach today in nondenominational schools may take it for granted that these schools have no institutional mandate to espouse a particular religious agenda. Yet, how did this relatively new approach become common during the last century, when in the preceding era the opposite was true? A close reading of one context or institution can reveal broader trends applicable in many other realms. The evolution of the approach to religious scholarship at nineteenth-century Harvard can serve as one such specific, but widely illuminating, point of inquiry. The deliberate shift away from instruction in doctrinal theology toward a more modern approach to religion as an academic field of study became a prominent trend in American higher education, with Harvard leading the way. But why did Harvard pursue this particular agenda in advance of other institutions? This article suggests that the answer lies largely in political concerns. Harvard was concerned with issues of perception and the practical consequences resulting from public expression of disapprobation.

The struggle to provide primary education for the Catholic poor in England and Wales dominated the agenda of English Catholic leaders in the last half of the nineteenth century. This effort occurred within the larger framework of a national educational revolution that slowly pushed the government into providing public education for the first time. Although state education grants at the elementary level began in 1833, lingering problems forced the government to establish a new era of educational provision with the controversial Education Act of 1870. This act created a dual education system consisting of the long-standing denominational schools operated by the different churches and new rate-supported board schools, operated by local school boards, providing no religious instruction or nondenominational religious instruction. In the closing years of the nineteenth century, the dual system grew intolerable for Catholics because local rates (property taxes) only supported the board schools and gave them almost unlimited funding while Catholic schools struggled to make ends meet on school pence and shrinking state grants, which Catholics had only had access to beginning in 1847.

Abstract:The city of Guangzhou, China, hosts a diverse and growing population of foreign Christians. The religious needs of investors and professionals have been accommodated through government approval of a nondenominational church for foreigners. By contrast, African Pentecostal churches operate out of anonymous buildings under informal and fragile agreements with law-enforcement officers. The marginality of the churches is mirrored by the daily lives of the church-goers: Many are undocumented immigrants who restrain their movements to avoid police interception. In contrast to these experiences, the churches present alternative geographies where the migrants take center stage. First, Africans are given responsibility for evangelizing the Gospel, as Europeans are seen to have abandoned their mission. Second, China is presented as a pivotal battlefield for Christianity. And finally, Guangzhou is heralded for its potential to deliver divine promises of prosperity. This geographical imagery assigns meaning to the migration experience, but also reinforces ethnic isolation. The analysis is based on in-depth interviews, participant observation, and video recordings of sermons in a Pentecostal church in Guangzhou with a predominately Nigerian congregation.

This study examined the relationships between five dimensions of religious involvement (i.e., participation, divine interaction, existential certainty, spiritual gifts, and divine power or authority), two forms of secular social involvement (i.e., social activity and social affiliation), six social background covariates (i.e., marital status, gender, race, age, social class, and traumatic life events), and individual life satisfaction. Following specific theories of life satisfaction previously delineated by Ellison (Ellison, 1991; Ellison, Gay, & Glass, 1989), the study employed nested regression models to analyze data from a convenience sample of 163 adolescents and adults derived from a university (n = 68) and a nondenominational protestant church (n = 95) in the Southeast. In general, findings indicated that individuals with strong religious faith report higher levels of life satisfaction. Specifically, two of the five dimensions of religious involvement, divine power and existential certainty, had relatively strong relationships with life satisfaction, when controlling for social background covariates and secular social involvement. In addition, both forms of secular social involvement have small but persistent positive relationships with life satisfaction when social background variables and religiosity are held constant. Also discussed are the implications of the findings for psychologists interested in personality/developmental theory, social psychology, and counseling.

AbstractThis article argues that gospel hymnody was integral to the construction of modern evangelicalism. Through an analysis of the debate over worship music in three denominations, the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Christian Reformed Church, and the Reformed Church in America, from 1890–1940, I reveal how worship music was essential to the negotiation between churchly tradition and practical faith, between institutional authority and popular choice that characterized the twentieth-century “liberal/conservative” divide. While seemingly innocuous, debates over the legitimacy of gospel hymns in congregational worship were a significant aspect of the increasing theological, social, and cultural divisions within denominations as well as between evangelicals more broadly. Gospel hymnody became representative of a newly respectable, nonsectarian, and populist evangelicalism that stressed individualized salvation and personal choice, often putting it at odds with doctrinal orthodoxy and church tradition. These songs fostered an imagined community of conservative evangelicals, one whose formation rested on personal choice and whose authority revolved around a network of nondenominational organizations rather than an institutional body. At the same time, denominational debates about gospel hymnody reveal the fluid nature of the conservative/liberal binary and the complicated relationship between evangelicalism and modernism generally. While characterizations of “liberal” and “conservative” tend to emphasize biblical interpretation, the inclusion of worship music and style complicates this narrow focus. As is evident through the case studies, denominations typically categorized as theologically liberal or conservative also incorporated both traditional and modern elements of worship.

AbstractFrom 1922 through 1936 Max Yergan, an African-American graduate of historically Black Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina represented the North American YMCA in South Africa through the auspices of the Student Christian Association. A student secretary since his sophomore year in 1911, with Indian and East African experience in World War One, Yergan's star rose sufficiently to permit him entry into the racially challenging South Africa field after a protracted campaign waged on his behalf by such interfaith luminaries as Gold Coast proto nationalist J.E.K. Aggrey and the formidable Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois. Arriving on the eve of the Great Rand Mine Strike of 1922, Yergan's South African years were punctuated by political concerns. Entering the country as an Evangelical Pan-Africanist influenced by the social gospel thrust of late nineteenth and early twentieth century American Protestantism that reached the YMCA and other faith-friendly but nondenominational organizations, Yergan became favorably disposed to Marxist and Marxist-Leninist doctrine in the course of his South African posting. Against the backdrop of the labor agitation of the post World War One era and the expansion and transformation of the South African Communist Party that occurred during the mid to late nineteen twenties, Yergan's response to what he termed "the appeal of Communism" made him an avatar of a liberation theology fusing Marxist revolution and Christianity. This paper details some of the trajectory of that momentous and profound personal evolution.

The legislative acts of the Provisional Government regulating the functioning of religious organizations has not been sufficiently studied. The bills, which were created in the various ministries of the Provisional Government and failed to become law, are virtually unexplored. On the wave of political events in Russia in February and March 1917, the nondenominational Provisional Government came to power. There arose the need for a comprehensive reform of public administration in Russia and, in particular, church-state relations. In the bowels of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Provisional Government, there was created a structure that developed the draft laws on the status of various denominations: 1) the group on general religious issues; 2) the commission for the revision of the statutory provisions about the Roman Catholic Church in Russia; and 3) the group on issues relating to the Old Believers. This publication focuses on the activities of this final group. The main outcome of this group, working in close alliance with representatives of the Old Believers, was the creation of the draft law on the “legalization” of the third Orthodox Church in Russia (after the Russian and Georgian Orthodox Churches), that is, the Old Orthodox Belokrinitskaya Hierarchy, which, in 1988, became known as the Russian Orthodox Old Belief Church. The resulting bill, dated 18 October 1917, was submitted to the Provisional Government for approval. However, it was not approved because of the overthrow of the Provisional Government on 25 October of that same year. The present article introduces this 1917 bill to “legalize” the Russian Old Orthodox Belokrinitskaya Hierarchy into scholarly awareness.

School choice is the most controversial education policy issue of the 1990s. John Chubb and Terry Moe's Politics, Markets and America's Schools stimulated this investigation. They concluded that teacher and administrator autonomy was the most important influence on student achievement. They assumed that the organization of private schools offered greater autonomy resulting in higher student achievement and that the bureaucracy of public schools stifles autonomy limiting student achievement. The research undertaken here elaborates, elucidates, and fills in the framework of teacher and principal autonomy in public and private secondary schools. Interviews of more than thirty teachers and administrators in six high schools, observations, field notes, and analysis of documents collected in the field form the empirical base of this work. The sites included three private, independent, nondenominational secondary schools which are college preparatory and three public secondary schools noted for high graduation rates and offering numerous advanced placement courses.The feelings expressed by both public and private school participants in this study testify to equally high degrees of autonomy. Issues that emerged from data analysis in this study which mitigate and shape autonomy include the following: conflicting and contradictory demands, shared beliefs, layers of protection, a system of laws, funding constraints and matters of size of the institution. These issues challenge oversimplified assertions that differences of any importance exist between the autonomy experienced by professionals in public and private high schools. This study reveals the complexity of the concept of autonomy and challenges the myth that teachers and principals in private schools enjoy autonomy and freedom from democratic bureaucracy that their public school counterparts do not.

The Whig educational proposals of 1839 are regarded as an important step in the centralization and growth of state control over the education of English working-class children. Introduced by Lord John Russell on February 12, the plan called for state supervision of education by a committee of the Privy Council, the erection of a nondenominational state normal school and two model schools, state inspection of all schools in receipt of the grants established in 1833, and a new system of allocation of those grants based not on the size of the voluntary contributions raised by the National Society or the British and Foreign School Society (BFSS) but on the local needs as ascertained by any “reputable” school society. Historians have viewed the proposals as the inevitable outcome of popular pressures brought to bear on government. Unable to resist their own Erastian urge to attack the privileged position of the church, and persuaded by Brougham, who figured prominently in the 1833 grant and had unsuccessfully proposed a national system as recently as the autumn of 1837, or alternatively by the Radicals J. A. Roebuck and Thomas Wyse, themselves supporters of the Central Society for Education's plans for a national secular system of education, the Whigs are regarded as having responded to popular, reformist demands. “In 1839,” wrote Halevy, “the cabinet yielded.” England was last among the Protestant countries in the matter of primary education; Roebuck, Wyse, and Brougham had failed in their separate efforts to promote the cause; and the government could do little other than propose a remedy for 3 million uneducated children.

Resumen: En las actuales sociedades plurales no confesionales, los grupos religiosos entienden el acceso al espacio público como un derecho a la ciudad. Este derecho legitima su condición de actores sociales, que traducen como visibilización en el espacio público y participación en la vida política del municipio, a través de diversas nociones vinculadas a la modernidad y la transparencia. Para explorar esta hipótesis, este artículo examina el caso de los musulmanes bangladeshíes del multicultural barrio madrileño de Lavapiés, el cual presenta semejanzas con otros barrios multiculturales de ciudades del sur de Europa como Lisboa o Roma: un barrio afectado por un acelerado proceso de gentrificación y turistificación. Se analizan las circunstancias en las que esta comunidad intenta acceder al espacio público, con el fin de lograr una mayor legitimación y reconocimiento, teniendo en cuenta las diferentes prácticas y discursos que se despliegan en determinados eventos y festividades.Abstract: In current nondenominational plural societies, religious groups understand access to public space as a right to the city. This right legitimizes their status as social actors, who are entitled to have a public life and to be recognized, through various notions linked to modernity and transparency. To explore this hypothesis, this article examines the case of Bangladeshi Muslims in Madrid’s multicultural neighborhood of Lavapiés, which has similarities with other multicultural neighborhoods in southern European cities, which has similarities with other multicultural neighbourhoods in southern European cities, such as Lisbon or Rome: a barrio affected by an accelerated gentrification and touristification process. It analyzes the circumstances through which this community attempts to access public space, in order to achieve further legitimization and recognition, by bringing into account the different practices and discourses displayed in specific events and festivities.

Termed the “religion singularity” by Kenneth Howard, the habitual fragmentation of institutional Christianity has led to the exponential growth in denominations and worship centers despite the annual growth rate of new believers remaining the same. Howard has concluded that denominations are unlikely to survive this crisis, although worship centers are much more likely to survive if they are willing to be flexible. The purpose of this article is to identify the epistemic trends that have led to the destabilization of institutional Christianity over the last century, namely the shifting worldview from modernity to postmodernity, and how this shift has influenced the rise of nondenominational house church attendance in American Christianity.

In this experimental study, a national random sample of high school principals (stratified by gender) were asked to evaluate hypothetical applicants whose resumes varied by religion (Jewish, Catholic, nondenominational) and gender (male, female) for employment as assistant principals. Results reveal that male principals rate all applicants higher than female principals and that the gender and religion of applicants failed to negatively or positively affect principals’ evaluations. These results suggest that discrimination based on an applicant’s gender and religion failed to be manifested during the pre-interview stage of the selection process. The paper concludes with a theoretical discussion of the distinction between explicit and implicit prejudice, and encourages future researchers to investigate the potential impact of prejudice on employment selection decisions and to consider whether schools should promote diversity in leadership positions.

AbstractThis study sought to determine the level of clergy distress and other psychological characteristics of Black pastors and their relationship to life satisfaction through a convenience sample of 2786 Black pastors in historically Black Protestant denominations and nondenominational Black churches. The response rate equaled 10.1% (283/2786) while the survey completion rate equaled 77% (218/283). These 218 Black pastors were serving as either senior pastors (86.3%) or co-pastors (13.7%). This study found clergy distress in Black pastors did not differ based on gender or age but differed by church size and denomination. Clergy distress (r = − .187, p = .023) and irritation (r = − .293, p = .003) possessed significant relationships with satisfaction with life as expected, but stress management (r = .039, p = .641), spiritual well-being in daily life (r = .140, p = .140), and spiritual well-being in ministry (r = − .064, p = .475) did not, which was surprising. Notably strong relationships existed between stress management and spiritual well-being in daily life (r = .469, p = .003) and stress management and irritation (r = − .359, p = .003). These two important relationships may offer some guideposts for Black pastors in developing strategies to combat the impact of both clergy distress and irritation. The study concludes with implications for Black pastors and suggestions for future research.

Introduction Explorations of the multimedia game format within cultural studies have been broadly approached from two perspectives: one -- the impact of technologies on user interaction particularly with regard to social implications, and the other -- human computer interactions within the framework of cybercultures. Another approach to understanding or speaking about games within cultural studies is to focus on the game experience as cultural practice -- as an activity or an event. In this article I wish to initiate an exploration of the aesthetics of player space as a distinctive element of the gameplay experience. In doing so I propose that an understanding of aesthetic spatial issues as an element of player interactivity and engagement is important for understanding the cultural practice of adventure gameplay. In approaching these questions, I am focussing on the single-player exploration adventure game in particular Myst and The Crystal Key. In describing these games as adventures I am drawing on Chris Crawford's The Art of Computer Game Design, which although a little dated, focusses on game design as a distinct activity. He brings together a theoretical approach with extensive experience as a game designer himself (Excalibur, Legionnaire, Gossip). Whilst at Atari he also worked with Brenda Laurel, a key theorist in the area of computer design and dramatic structure. Adventure games such as Myst and The Crystal Key might form a sub-genre in Chris Crawford's taxonomy of computer game design. Although they use the main conventions of the adventure game -- essentially a puzzle to be solved with characters within a story context -- the main focus and source of pleasure for the player is exploration, particularly the exploration of worlds or cosmologies. The main gameplay of both games is to travel through worlds solving clues, picking up objects, and interacting with other characters. In Myst the player has to solve the riddle of the world they have entered -- as the CD-ROM insert states "Now you're here, wherever here is, with no option but to explore." The goal, as the player must work out, is to release the father Atrus from prison by bringing magic pages of a book to different locations in the worlds. Hints are offered by broken-up, disrupted video clips shown throughout the game. In The Crystal Key, the player as test pilot has to save a civilisation by finding clues, picking up objects, mending ships and defeating an opponent. The questions foregrounded by a focus on the aesthetics of navigation are: What types of representational context are being set up? What choices have designers made about representational context? How are the players positioned within these spaces? What are the implications for the player's sense of orientation and navigation? Architectural Fabrication For the ancient Greeks, painting was divided into two categories: magalography (the painting of great things) and rhyparography (the painting of small things). Magalography covered mythological and historical scenes, which emphasised architectural settings, the human figure and grand landscapes. Rhyparography referred to still lifes and objects. In adventure games, particularly those that attempt to construct a cosmology such as Myst and The Crystal Key, magalography and rhyparography collide in a mix of architectural monumentality and obsessive detailing of objects. For the ancient Greeks, painting was divided into two categories: magalography (the painting of great things) and rhyparography (the painting of small things). Magalography covered mythological and historical scenes, which emphasised architectural settings, the human figure and grand landscapes. Rhyparography referred to still lifes and objects. In adventure games, particularly those that attempt to construct a cosmology such as Myst and The Crystal Key, magalography and rhyparography collide in a mix of architectural monumentality and obsessive detailing of objects. The creation of a digital architecture in adventure games mimics the Pompeii wall paintings with their interplay of extruded and painted features. In visualising the space of a cosmology, the environment starts to be coded like the urban or built environment with underlying geometry and textured surface or dressing. In The Making of Myst (packaged with the CD-ROM) Chuck Carter, the artist on Myst, outlines the process of creating Myst Island through painting the terrain in grey scale then extruding the features and adding textural render -- a methodology that lends itself to a hybrid of architectural and painted geometry. Examples of external architecture and of internal room design can be viewed online. In the spatial organisation of the murals of Pompeii and later Rome, orthogonals converged towards several vertical axes showing multiple points of view simultaneously. During the high Renaissance, notions of perspective developed into a more formal system known as the construzione legittima or legitimate construction. This assumed a singular position of the on-looker standing in the same place as that occupied by the artist when the painting was constructed. In Myst there is an exaggeration of the underlying structuring technique of the construzione legittima with its emphasis on geometry and mathematics. The player looks down at a slight angle onto the screen from a fixed vantage point and is signified as being within the cosmological expanse, either in off-screen space or as the cursor. Within the cosmology, the island as built environment appears as though viewed through an enlarging lens, creating the precision and coldness of a Piero della Francesca painting. Myst mixes flat and three-dimensional forms of imagery on the same screen -- the flat, sketchy portrayal of the trees of Myst Island exists side-by-side with the monumental architectural buildings and landscape design structures created in Macromodel. This image shows the flat, almost expressionistic trees of Myst Island juxtaposed with a fountain rendered in high detail. This recalls the work of Giotto in the Arena chapel. In Joachim's Dream, objects and buildings have depth, but trees, plants and sky -- the space in-between objects -- is flat. Myst Island conjures up the realm of a magic, realist space with obsolete artefacts, classic architectural styles (the Albert Hall as the domed launch pad, the British Museum as the library, the vernacular cottage in the wood), mechanical wonders, miniature ships, fountains, wells, macabre torture instruments, ziggurat-like towers, symbols and odd numerological codes. Adam Mates describes it as "that beautiful piece of brain-deadening sticky-sweet eye-candy" but more than mere eye-candy or graphic verisimilitude, it is the mix of cultural ingredients and signs that makes Myst an intriguing place to play. The buildings in The Crystal Key, an exploratory adventure game in a similar genre to Myst, celebrate the machine aesthetic and modernism with Buckminster Fuller style geodesic structures, the bombe shape, exposed ducting, glass and steel, interiors with movable room partitions and abstract expressionist decorations. An image of one of these modernist structures is available online. The Crystal Key uses QuickTime VR panoramas to construct the exterior and interior spaces. Different from the sharp detail of Myst's structures, the focus changes from sharp in wide shot to soft focus in close up, with hot-spot objects rendered in trompe l'oeil detail. The Tactility of Objects "The aim of trompe l'oeil -- using the term in its widest sense and applying it to both painting and objects -- is primarily to puzzle and to mystify" (Battersby 19). In the 15th century, Brunelleschi invented a screen with central apparatus in order to obtain exact perspective -- the monocular vision of the camera obscura. During the 17th century, there was a renewed interest in optics by the Dutch artists of the Rembrandt school (inspired by instruments developed for Dutch seafaring ventures), in particular Vermeer, Hoogstraten, de Hooch and Dou. Gerard Dou's painting of a woman chopping onions shows this. These artists were experimenting with interior perspective and trompe l'oeil in order to depict the minutia of the middle-class, domestic interior. Within these luminous interiors, with their receding tiles and domestic furniture, is an elevation of the significance of rhyparography. In the Girl Chopping Onions of 1646 by Gerard Dou the small things are emphasised -- the group of onions, candlestick holder, dead fowl, metal pitcher, and bird cage. Trompe l'oeil as an illusionist strategy is taken up in the worlds of Myst, The Crystal Key and others in the adventure game genre. Traditionally, the fascination of trompe l'oeil rests upon the tension between the actual painting and the scam; the physical structures and the faux painted structures call for the viewer to step closer to wave at a fly or test if the glass had actually broken in the frame. Mirian Milman describes trompe l'oeil painting in the following manner: "the repertory of trompe-l'oeil painting is made up of obsessive elements, it represents a reality immobilised by nails, held in the grip of death, corroded by time, glimpsed through half-open doors or curtains, containing messages that are sometimes unreadable, allusions that are often misunderstood, and a disorder of seemingly familiar and yet remote objects" (105). Her description could be a scene from Myst with in its suggestion of theatricality, rich texture and illusionistic play of riddle or puzzle. In the trompe l'oeil painterly device known as cartellino, niches and recesses in the wall are represented with projecting elements and mock bas-relief. This architectural trickery is simulated in the digital imaging of extruded and painting elements to give depth to an interior or an object. Other techniques common to trompe l'oeil -- doors, shadowy depths and staircases, half opened cupboard, and paintings often with drapes and curtains to suggest a layering of planes -- are used throughout Myst as transition points. In the trompe l'oeil paintings, these transition points were often framed with curtains or drapes that appeared to be from the spectator space -- creating a painting of a painting effect. Myst is rich in this suggestion of worlds within worlds through the framing gesture afforded by windows, doors, picture frames, bookcases and fireplaces. Views from a window -- a distant landscape or a domestic view, a common device for trompe l'oeil -- are used in Myst to represent passageways and transitions onto different levels. Vertical space is critical for extending navigation beyond the horizontal through the terraced landscape -- the tower, antechamber, dungeon, cellars and lifts of the fictional world. Screen shots show the use of the curve, light diffusion and terracing to invite the player. In The Crystal Key vertical space is limited to the extent of the QTVR tilt making navigation more of a horizontal experience. Out-Stilling the Still Dutch and Flemish miniatures of the 17th century give the impression of being viewed from above and through a focussing lens. As Mastai notes: "trompe l'oeil, therefore is not merely a certain kind of still life painting, it should in fact 'out-still' the stillest of still lifes" (156). The intricate detailing of objects rendered in higher resolution than the background elements creates a type of hyper-reality that is used in Myst to emphasise the physicality and actuality of objects. This ultimately enlarges the sense of space between objects and codes them as elements of significance within the gameplay. The obsessive, almost fetishistic, detailed displays of material artefacts recall the curiosity cabinets of Fabritius and Hoogstraten. The mechanical world of Myst replicates the Dutch 17th century fascination with the optical devices of the telescope, the convex mirror and the prism, by coding them as key signifiers/icons in the frame. In his peepshow of 1660, Hoogstraten plays with an enigma and optical illusion of a Dutch domestic interior seen as though through the wrong end of a telescope. Using the anamorphic effect, the image only makes sense from one vantage point -- an effect which has a contemporary counterpart in the digital morphing widely used in adventure games. The use of crumbled or folded paper standing out from the plane surface of the canvas was a recurring motif of the Vanitas trompe l'oeil paintings. The highly detailed representation and organisation of objects in the Vanitas pictures contained the narrative or symbology of a religious or moral tale. (As in this example by Hoogstraten.) In the cosmology of Myst and The Crystal Key, paper contains the narrative of the back-story lovingly represented in scrolls, books and curled paper messages. The entry into Myst is through the pages of an open book, and throughout the game, books occupy a privileged position as holders of stories and secrets that are used to unlock the puzzles of the game. Myst can be read as a Dantesque, labyrinthine journey with its rich tapestry of images, its multi-level historical associations and battle of good and evil. Indeed the developers, brothers Robyn and Rand Miller, had a fertile background to draw on, from a childhood spent travelling to Bible churches with their nondenominational preacher father. The Diorama as System Event The diorama (story in the round) or mechanical exhibit invented by Daguerre in the 19th century created a mini-cosmology with player anticipation, action and narrative. It functioned as a mini-theatre (with the spectator forming the fourth wall), offering a peek into mini-episodes from foreign worlds of experience. The Musée Mechanique in San Francisco has dioramas of the Chinese opium den, party on the captain's boat, French execution scenes and ghostly graveyard episodes amongst its many offerings, including a still showing an upper class dancing party called A Message from the Sea. These function in tandem with other forbidden pleasures of the late 19th century -- public displays of the dead, waxwork museums and kinetescope flip cards with their voyeuristic "What the Butler Saw", and "What the Maid Did on Her Day Off" tropes. Myst, along with The 7th Guest, Doom and Tomb Raider show a similar taste for verisimilitude and the macabre. However, the pre-rendered scenes of Myst and The Crystal Key allow for more diorama like elaborate and embellished details compared to the emphasis on speed in the real-time-rendered graphics of the shoot-'em-ups. In the gameplay of adventure games, animated moments function as rewards or responsive system events: allowing the player to navigate through the seemingly solid wall; enabling curtains to be swung back, passageways to appear, doors to open, bookcases to disappear. These short sequences resemble the techniques used in mechanical dioramas where a coin placed in the slot enables a curtain or doorway to open revealing a miniature narrative or tableau -- the closure of the narrative resulting in the doorway shutting or the curtain being pulled over again. These repeating cycles of contemplation-action-closure offer the player one of the rewards of the puzzle solution. The sense of verisimilitude and immersion in these scenes is underscored by the addition of sound effects (doors slamming, lifts creaking, room atmosphere) and music. Geographic Locomotion Static imagery is the standard backdrop of the navigable space of the cosmology game landscape. Myst used a virtual camera around a virtual set to create a sequence of still camera shots for each point of view. The use of the still image lends itself to a sense of the tableauesque -- the moment frozen in time. These tableauesque moments tend towards the clean and anaesthetic, lacking any evidence of the player's visceral presence or of other human habitation. The player's navigation from one tableau screen to the next takes the form of a 'cyber-leap' or visual jump cut. These jumps -- forward, backwards, up, down, west, east -- follow on from the geographic orientation of the early text-based adventure games. In their graphic form, they reveal a new framing angle or point of view on the scene whilst ignoring the rules of classical continuity editing. Games such as The Crystal Key show the player's movement through space (from one QTVR node to another) by employing a disorientating fast zoom, as though from the perspective of a supercharged wheelchair. Rather than reconciling the player to the state of movement, this technique tends to draw attention to the technologies of the programming apparatus. The Crystal Key sets up a meticulous screen language similar to filmic dramatic conventions then breaks its own conventions by allowing the player to jump out of the crashed spaceship through the still intact window. The landscape in adventure games is always partial, cropped and fragmented. The player has to try and map the geographical relationship of the environment in order to understand where they are and how to proceed (or go back). Examples include selecting the number of marker switches on the island to receive Atrus's message and the orientation of Myst's tower in the library map to obtain key clues. A screenshot shows the arrival point in Myst from the dock. In comprehending the landscape, which has no centre, the player has to create a mental map of the environment by sorting significant connecting elements into chunks of spatial elements similar to a Guy Debord Situationist map. Playing the Flaneur The player in Myst can afford to saunter through the landscape, meandering at a more leisurely pace that would be possible in a competitive shoot-'em-up, behaving as a type of flaneur. The image of the flaneur as described by Baudelaire motions towards fin de siècle decadence, the image of the socially marginal, the dispossessed aristocrat wandering the urban landscape ready for adventure and unusual exploits. This develops into the idea of the artist as observer meandering through city spaces and using the power of memory in evoking what is observed for translation into paintings, writing or poetry. In Myst, the player as flaneur, rather than creating paintings or writing, is scanning the landscape for clues, witnessing objects, possible hints and pick-ups. The numbers in the keypad in the antechamber, the notes from Atrus, the handles on the island marker, the tower in the forest and the miniature ship in the fountain all form part of a mnemomic trompe l'oeil. A screenshot shows the path to the library with one of the island markers and the note from Atrus. In the world of Myst, the player has no avatar presence and wanders around a seemingly unpeopled landscape -- strolling as a tourist venturing into the unknown -- creating and storing a mental map of objects and places. In places these become items for collection -- cultural icons with an emphasised materiality. In The Crystal Key iconography they appear at the bottom of the screen pulsing with relevance when active. A screenshot shows a view to a distant forest with the "pick-ups" at the bottom of the screen. This process of accumulation and synthesis suggests a Surrealist version of Joseph Cornell's strolls around Manhattan -- collecting, shifting and organising objects into significance. In his 1982 taxonomy of game design, Chris Crawford argues that without competition these worlds are not really games at all. That was before the existence of the Myst adventure sub-genre where the pleasures of the flaneur are a particular aspect of the gameplay pleasures outside of the rules of win/loose, combat and dominance. By turning the landscape itself into a pathway of significance signs and symbols, Myst, The Crystal Key and other games in the sub-genre offer different types of pleasures from combat or sport -- the pleasures of the stroll -- the player as observer and cultural explorer. References Battersby, M. Trompe L'Oeil: The Eye Deceived. New York: St. Martin's, 1974. Crawford, C. The Art of Computer Game Design. Original publication 1982, book out of print. 15 Oct. 2000 <http://members.nbci.com/kalid/art/art.php>. Darley Andrew. Visual Digital Culture: Surface Play and Spectacle in New Media Genres. London: Routledge, 2000. Lunenfeld, P. Digital Dialectic: New Essays on New Media. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT P 1999. Mates, A. Effective Illusory Worlds: A Comparative Analysis of Interfaces in Contemporary Interactive Fiction. 1998. 15 Oct. 2000 <http://www.wwa.com/~mathes/stuff/writings>. Mastai, M. L. d'Orange. Illusion in Art, Trompe L'Oeil: A History of Pictorial Illusion. New York: Abaris, 1975. Miller, Robyn and Rand. "The Making of Myst." Myst. Cyan and Broderbund, 1993. Milman, M. Trompe-L'Oeil: The Illusion of Reality. New York: Skira Rizzoli, 1982. Murray, J. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997. Wertheim, M. The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Cyberspace from Dante to the Internet. Sydney: Doubleday, 1999. Game References 7th Guest. Trilobyte, Inc., distributed by Virgin Games, 1993. Doom. Id Software, 1992. Excalibur. Chris Crawford, 1982. Myst. Cyan and Broderbund, 1993. Tomb Raider. Core Design and Eidos Interactive, 1996. The Crystal Key. Dreamcatcher Interactive, 1999. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Bernadette Flynn. "Towards an Aesthetics of Navigation -- Spatial Organisation in the Cosmology of the Adventure Game." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.5 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/navigation.php>. Chicago style: Bernadette Flynn, "Towards an Aesthetics of Navigation -- Spatial Organisation in the Cosmology of the Adventure Game," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 5 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/navigation.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Bernadette Flynn. (2000) Towards an aesthetics of navigation -- spatial organisation in the cosmology of the adventure game. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(5). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/navigation.php> ([your date of access]).