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Paper short abstract

This paper takes a qualified stance regarding the transformative potential of digital technologies in Taiwanese temple festivals. New technologies are successfully integrated into practice to the extent that they further the sensory qualities of what is a fundamentally social experience.

Paper long abstract

Based on twelve months of participant observation with a Pak-koan music troupe in the historic district of Dadaocheng in Taipei, I attend to the twin concerns of immersion and documentation. While my interlocutors seek both of these values, in practice the “technologies of capture” used to enhance features of immersion and documentation do not always align. Immersion and documentation rely on different material media to conjure Alfred Gell’s “enchantment of technology”: On the one hand, immersion operates through techniques that create atmospheric and physical connections with the material bodies of divine beings, such as divination, music, spirit possession, or intimate acts like cleaning the gods. By contrast, the goal of documentation is to preserve detailed images of technologies of enchantment. Because devices used in documentation such as smartphones need privileged access to ritual space, they easily disrupt the flow between participants and the material things they use to generate immersion. Of course, by documenting practices digital technologies help individuals appreciate virtuosity. However, the video format offers little opportunity for social interaction and creates a mediatized distance. Being hosted on YouTube and Facebook, any immersive potential has to submit to the profit-maximizing algorithms of those platforms. This commodifying logic detracts from a lived festival experience. To be incorporated into regular religious practice, digital technologies will instead have to enhance social embeddedness and immersion over abstraction and documentation.