Something the Screen Cannot Hold
Oikon Studios' Phygital Fellows Project
Participants of the Phygital Fellows cohort were invited to build a new ministry project. This is an article on the project proposed by Rev. Mike Whang and Oikon Studios.
Fragmented
We live within an ecology of fragmented attention.
Open tabs.
Endless notifications.
Infinite scroll.
We consume content
faster that it can be integrated.
Spiritual content feels no different.
Briefly encountered.
Quickly forgotten.
Dissonance
Oikon Studios is a digital liturgy project.
Weekly prayers arriving in your inbox
offering Scripture, poetry, silence, blessing.
And yet.
Creating and reading these liturgies
has felt a bit ironic.
Like listening to a sermon on slowing down
at 2.5x speed.
These prayers
inviting attentiveness
are on a medium
built to commoditize
attention.
This is not wrong.
But maybe, dissonant.
Or maybe, incomplete.
As though the words
are asking the body
for something the screen
cannot hold.
Embodiment
So Oikon’s Phygital Fellows project
became a movement towards embodiment
from pixel to paper
from infinite feed to finite page
form distraction to attention.
Not as a rejection of technology
but an embrace of limitation
for the sake of presence.
A printed liturgy
has no infinite scroll.
It does not notify.
It does not refresh.
It does not seek optimization.
It simply waits.
Folded pages.
Heavy paper.
Minimal type.
Negative space.
Film photography.
All inviting
a deeper breath.
Resistance
In Chicago, during our Phygital Fellows gathering,
we shared the first run of these printed liturgies.
I felt the room slow down.
I felt an embodied practice emerge.
I felt the recovery of attention
as a quiet collective resistance to hurried living,
and a return to God.
Follow along here.
Design
