Art + Australia. Issue 4 (55.1): The Miracle

ISSN 0004-301 X
169 pages | Softcover | B&W and colour images 
October 2018

Editor: Edward Colless
Authors: Robert Cook, Tai Mitsuji, James Henry Collin, Thomas H. Ford, Chris Arneaud-Clarke, Adrian Martin, Jennifer Spinks, Sigi Jöttkandt, The Telepathy Project, Robyn Adler, Penelope Trotter, Peter Hill, Deborah Sims, Cristina Álvarez López

Don’t call the miracle a ‘supernatural’ event or manifestation. Don’t think of it as something conspicuously beyond or patently contrary to recognised norms and ascertained laws of nature. Think of the miracle, instead, as an intoxicating additive to nature—the injection of surcharge, both as a cost and pay-off, but in degree and level comparable to an overdose (be it electrical voltage, financial credit or of incorporeal status like charisma, whether that’s psychic or libidinal). In gaming, this surcharge is sometimes called ‘extra life’: resurrection or remission as an extended duration of the game that can only be realised in expenditure. (The only value of such an extra life is in its depletion.) In game terms, extra life is not an investment in narrative but an index of ludic dissipation. By deferring death and trivialising death’s symbolic function, it provides more playing time. It is a sort of miracle, even if programmed into the operating routine of the platform.