The Flying Roll
A memetic history of Jezreel’s Tower  
by John Walter

The Flying Roll
© John Walter 2019

Jezreel’s Tower was an imposing building situated at the top of Chatham Hill in Medway, which was built in 1897 by the cult that bore its name and then left derelict until it was demolished in 1961.

The Flying Roll was the name of a proselytising newspaper published by the Jezreelites. This new edition of the paper gathers together some of the research and development that I have undertaken over the past four months for a new film about the building and the cult that created it, which will be produced with Cement Fields for the Estuary Festival in September 2020.

Jezreel’s Tower will enlarge on recent investigations that I have made using Virtual Reality, 360° cameras and Gaming Engines to create a new kind of narrative pictorial space that I am calling 'A Painting Engine'.

Studio experiment with 360° camera and VR animation - 
Use mouse or touchscreen to change direction of view

© John Walter 2019

The film will use the story of Jezreel’s Tower to allegorise how Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection can enrich our understanding of the way in which culture develops.

In The Selfish Gene (1976) Richard Dawkins coined the term ‘meme’ to describe a unit of cultural transmission equivalent to the gene in biology. Memetics (the study of memes) asks how ideas acquire people rather than how people acquire ideas. Memes use human brains and the extended phenotype of human brains - including words, writing, printing, books, painting, music, architecture the Internet - as the vehicles for making new copies.

Religions and cults have been very successful in having their memes copied over a long period of human history. As Aaron Lynch has noted in his 1996 book Thought Contagion “The world bustles with religion – because religions effectively harness human activity toward belief propagation”. The meme’s eye view of how culture transmits can shed fresh insight into how a cult like Jezreel’s came into existence and then diminished over time.

A road in Gillingham on the site of the tower is now named after Jezreel.
Photo: © John Walter, 2019

James Rowland White (b. cir 1851) enlisted in the British army in 1875 and around the same time became interested in the writings of Joanna Southcott.

Southcott was a self-proclaimed prophet notable for her belief, at the age of 64, that she was to give birth to the new Messiah (to be named Shiloh) as well as for a box of prophecies that she left to the nation - to be opened by a congregation of 24 Anglican Bishops during a time of national crisis. Her box has never been opened.

An experiment using composited 360° footage to create a collaged space in the VR - 
Use mouse or touchscreen to change direction of view

© John Walter 2019

In 1881 White returned from being stationed in Secunderabad in India to Chatham Dockyard and quickly joined a sect known as The New House of Israel, which followed the teachings of Southcott and her successor John Wroe.

The sect was part of a larger movement at that time generally referred to as British Israelism, which claimed that the British were descendants of the ten lost tribes of Israel referred to in the Bible. White soon asserted dominance over the sect and renamed it The New and Latter House of Israel.

He also changed his name to James Jershom Jezreel based on a vision that he had in a dream. Jezreel was the name of an ancient Israelite city located in the north of modern day Israel. By associating himself with the Bible in this way Jezreel granted himself the credentials he needed to assert that he was the next in a line of prophets to whom Wroe and Southcott belonged.

The triple J of his name captures the imagination – a classic memetic strategy to encourage transmission to more hosts; the alliteration is catchy and memorable; it feels nice in the mouth when spoken as well as good on the ears when heard. Jezreel is a clever memeplex.

The Jezreel cult is partly the result of the oversaturation of conventional Christianity in Europe by that point. The ubiquity of the Church in Europe meant that Christian practices had standardised into genres and ceased to evolve at any significant rate. In the face of this evolutionary atrophy the Jezreelites can be seen to demonstrate a proselytic zeal that emerges as an offshoot of mainstream Christianity - a new memetic species evolves.

Cults such as this often take up memes, such as the apocalyptic meme, that have lain dormant in mainstream religion and reactivate them. Jezreel built his cult upon the millenarian belief that a new era was soon coming to the world. Wroe and Southcott transmitted this same meme to their followers and despite the prophesied apocalypse failing to come Jezreel still successfully copied the strategy. The meme acquires people rather than people acquiring the meme. The apocalypse meme puts time pressure on members of the cult to proselytise and convert new hosts of the meme.

Experiment in 360° video using The Flying Roll logo - 
Use mouse or touchscreen to change direction of view

© John Walter 2019

Jezreel styled himself as God’s Messenger tasked with gathering the lost tribes of Israel together to enter the Kingdom of God. Heaven is another leveraging device for transmitting the religious meme “no non-hosts”. Jezreel is sometimes referred to as ‘The Sixth Trumpeter’ referring to a story in the Book of Revelation that seven angels will trumpet the arrival of the apocalypse, each one calling earthly sinners to repent with ever greater urgency.

Experiment using Insta360 OneX 360° camera and DaVinci Resolve software to edit video - 
Use mouse or touchscreen to change direction of view

© John Walter 2019

This accounts for why the trumpet features so heavily within the iconography of the Jezreelites. The logo for The Flying Roll depicts an aerial trumpet carrying a prophetic scroll capable of transmitting the Jezreelite meme to new hosts.

The logo is a clever meme that talks self-consciously about being a meme – this self-reflexivity might have helped contribute to its success. The Flying Roll was a real publication that the cult printed and sold internationally in order to promote their ideas.

It included the writings of Jezreel and Southcott as well as copies of Jezreelite hymns. The Flying Roll was so central to the activity of the cult that space for the printing presses was designed to go in the basement of the tower and built first in order to help generate further income. The Flying Roll is a great example of how the shift from spoken to written to printed word helped in giving fecundity, fidelity and longevity to memes such as these.

The Flying Roll, animation
© John Walter 2019

Modern transport also contributed to the proliferation of Jezreelite memes. A copy of The Flying Roll was acquired by Noah Drew, a farmer in Michigan, who went on to host Jezreel and his wife Queen Esther (nee Clarissa Rogers) on one of their many missionary tours of the New World. The couple travelled to The United States, Australia and New Zealand in order to gather followers for the sect and bring much needed financial assistance and labour back to Gillingham in order to help build the sanctuary.

On such missionary tours Jezreel would offer congregations what Aaron Lynch would refer to as “a package of belief attractants”, which included clan membership, being fed and given work and most of all a place beside God in the coming end of days. This was a desirable offer for many poor and struggling labouring folk.

Composite 360° video showing the possibility for building complex narratives using a single actor - 
Use mouse or touchscreen to change direction of view

© John Walter 2019

Noah Drew was one of the converts to liquidate his savings and donate them to the Jezreelite “treasury” and travel to Gillingham. He and other cult members were put to work on the farm around the site of the tower, known as Woodlands. In fact Jezreel was a savvy businessman who had erected a row of shops next to the site for the cult to make a living from, that included a butcher, a baker and a smithy.

Unlike other religious groups, such as the Amish, the Jezreelites did not immunise their membership against non-cult memes by restricting access to the outside world. Instead they employed singing, music and symbolic forms of meme proliferation – especially architecture – in order to conserve membership.

Musical performances by “Israel’s Band” were a popular feature of Jezreelite gatherings and encouraged non-members to attend. Branding religious ceremonies as entertainment has long been a memetic strategy for religious orders and the Jezreelites developed their own particular brand that favoured harps, piccolos and violins. Nevertheless the Jezreelites stood out against other people in Gillingham at that time. Their costume drew on Hassidic Jewish attire syphoned through Christian and Victorian fashions – for men a skull cap and long hair worn with strange pantaloons.

Gif of the cylindrical centre of the tower created in Tilt Brush - 
© John Walter 2019

Above all it was Jezreel’s Tower that was the grand project to unite followers and inspire them to work for the greater good of the cult. Architect Mr Margett proposed an adventurous steel-framed, brick building. The tower would be fireproof – not just useful during the apocalypse but also for Victorian life in general – and a circular hydraulic platform in the centre of the building could be raised and lowered for preaching and choral performances.

The space was vast. Later attempts at demolition proved very difficult. It was supposed to house the prophesied 144,000 followers for the Day of Judgment but more likely had capacity for 5000. Jezreel was fixated on the number 144,000, which derived from 12,000 each of the 12 tribes of Israel who were said in the bible to be “sealed” in heaven (Southcott had offered wax-sealed prophecies to believers in a related gesture).

Unfortunately for Jezreel the proportions of the tower ended up only being an approximation of this sacred geometry due to financial limitations and the standard measurements of building materials at the time. Each side was 124 feet and 6 inches (38.5 metres) and the height at the corners 120 feet (36.5 metres). To give you some contemporary comparison the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern is 115ft high – so Jezreel’s Tower was a significant structure. The architecture of the tower can be seen as a variant of the contemporary Gothic Revival memeplex. It was crenelated and featured prominent motifs in the brickwork – the flying roll of course, but also the crossed swords and the triple feather motif of the Prince of Wales – a reference to The Holy Trinity.

Model of Jezreel’s Tower on show at the Panacea Society in Bedford. 

Jezreel died from a heart attack in 1885. His heavy drinking is well documented. At the time of his death the foundations for the tower were built but the cornerstone had not yet been laid. He never got to see his vision completed. In the wake of Jezreel’s death a leadership battle occurred between Esther and a Scottish contender James Cumming.

Esther won but this was not without its controversies. She was considered a flamboyant and reckless woman, renowned for travelling around Gillingham in a horse-drawn carriage carrying a mace – hence the epithet Queen. She was not popular.

In imagining Esther in my mind’s eye I have frequently wondered if she was like Ma Anand Sheela, the former spokeswoman for the Rajneesh movement shown recently in the Netflix documentary series Wild Wild Country? Probably in part because of her charisma and determination Esther was an effective lead host for the Jezreelite meme. However, membership of the sect suffered as a result of Jezreel’s death but it did not disband.

One of the disillusioned was Noah Drew who requested his investment in the cult back. Esther refused his demand. Drew and his wife, who were elderly at this point, were exiled from the cult to poor lodgings nearby. This culminated in a riot and the police being called. The reputation of the cult suffered locally as a consequence.

The leader of the Rajneesh cult Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh with its spokeswoman Ma Anand Sheela.

A good portion of the tower was built by the time Esther died in 1897. Leadership of the cult split between Esther’s brother and “Prince Michael” a cult member from Detroit. The line of prophecy kept getting passed on and mutated each time. A later incarnation came in the form of Octavia (Mabel Barltrop) who established a version of the Southcottian, apocalyptic cult in Bedford known as the Panacea Society.

During the Edwardian period The Panacea Society were responsible for campaigning to have Southcott’s box of prophecies opened. They printed posters and placed adverts in Piccadilly Circus, on London buses and in other prominent locations. They even went to the lengths of preparing bedrooms in Bedford to host the 24 Anglican Bishops prophesied by Southcott to pray around the box before opening it. Today the Panacea Museum contains interesting exhibits about all the figures mentioned here.

A recreation of an Edwardian poster asking for Joanna Southcott’s box to be opened, pasted on the side of The Panacea Museum in Bedford. 

How does my film fit into this inheritance? The tower itself, as an architectural object, is at the centre of my interest. It’s hard to imagine now but Jezreel’s Tower was a significant British landmark during the first half of the twentieth century. So much so that it featured in a striking illustration by Tristram Hillier for Shell because it would have been recognisable to members of the public.

As an image the tower, and other Jezreelite symbols such as the flying roll, appeal to me as memetic cells that can be reprogrammed to transmit different memes than they were initially designed for. In this sense the film will be a memeplex about a memeplex, an artwork that can reflect on itself and its own construction. I suppose my aim for the film is to engineer a new memetic variant – one that talks about religious proselytism without doing it. Perhaps I am transmitting the Jezreel’s Tower meme by telling its story again in a different form? The building is the protagonist – an enigmatic mix of styles and functions that was a ruin from the outset – a folly by default.

An experimental drawing of Jezreel’s Tower created in Tilt Brush
Use mouse or touchscreen to change direction of view

© John Walter 2019

Virtual Reality has opened up a new terrain within which memes can spread. VR has been around for over thirty years although many people are only now gaining access to it, myself included, because the technology has come down in price as industry has found an affordable and efficient way to manufacture it.

What interests me about the space of VR is that it is hybrid. It is a gaming space, an architectural space, a collage space and a painting space simultaneously. To use it simply as an illustrative space seems limiting to me. The companies who make the hardware, such as Oculus, and the software, such as Google who make Tilt Brush, control the limitations within which we experience VR.

Hito Steyerl has criticised this spherical space as “bubble vision” and linked it to the information bubble that we experience nowadays through targeted adverts and algorithms editing our social media feed. However, I believe that it is not all bad. The virtual meme opens us up to understand our own human consciousness in a new and profound way, showing us the architecture of our imbalance and our challenging our perceptual limitations to evolve.

How Jezreel’s Tower would have looked upon completion 
© John Walter 2019

Further information:
P.G. Rogers, The Sixth Trumpeter – The Story of Jezreel and His Tower (1963), Oxford University Press
The Panacea Museum, Bedford
Ruth Windscheffel, The Jezreelites and their World 1875-1922 (2017), IB Taurus
Aaron Lynch, Thought Contagion (1998), Basic Books
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (1976), Oxford University Press
Claire McGlasson, The Rapture (2019), Faber & Faber
Jaron Lanier, Dawn of the New Everything: Encounters with Reality and Virtual Reality (2018), Macmillan USA
Hito Steyerl Bubble Vision on YouTube

The Flying Roll
A memetic history of Jezreel’s Tower  
by John Walter

The Flying Roll
© John Walter 2019

Jezreel’s Tower was an imposing building situated at the top of Chatham Hill in Medway, which was built in 1897 by the cult that bore its name and then left derelict until it was demolished in 1961.

The Flying Roll was the name of a proselytising newspaper published by the Jezreelites. This new edition of the paper gathers together some of the research and development that I have undertaken over the past four months for a new film about the building and the cult that created it, which will be produced with Cement Fields for the Estuary Festival in September 2020.

Jezreel’s Tower will enlarge on recent investigations that I have made using Virtual Reality, 360° cameras and Gaming Engines to create a new kind of narrative pictorial space that I am calling 'A Painting Engine'.

Studio experiment with 360° camera and VR animation - 
Use mouse or touchscreen to change direction of view

© John Walter 2019

The film will use the story of Jezreel’s Tower to allegorise how Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection can enrich our understanding of the way in which culture develops.

In The Selfish Gene (1976) Richard Dawkins coined the term ‘meme’ to describe a unit of cultural transmission equivalent to the gene in biology. Memetics (the study of memes) asks how ideas acquire people rather than how people acquire ideas. Memes use human brains and the extended phenotype of human brains - including words, writing, printing, books, painting, music, architecture the Internet - as the vehicles for making new copies.

Religions and cults have been very successful in having their memes copied over a long period of human history. As Aaron Lynch has noted in his 1996 book Thought Contagion “The world bustles with religion – because religions effectively harness human activity toward belief propagation”. The meme’s eye view of how culture transmits can shed fresh insight into how a cult like Jezreel’s came into existence and then diminished over time.

A road in Gillingham on the site of the tower is now named after Jezreel.
Photo: © John Walter, 2019

James Rowland White (b. cir 1851) enlisted in the British army in 1875 and around the same time became interested in the writings of Joanna Southcott.

Southcott was a self-proclaimed prophet notable for her belief, at the age of 64, that she was to give birth to the new Messiah (to be named Shiloh) as well as for a box of prophecies that she left to the nation - to be opened by a congregation of 24 Anglican Bishops during a time of national crisis. Her box has never been opened.

An experiment using composited 360° footage to create a collaged space in the VR - 
Use mouse or touchscreen to change direction of view

© John Walter 2019

In 1881 White returned from being stationed in Secunderabad in India to Chatham Dockyard and quickly joined a sect known as The New House of Israel, which followed the teachings of Southcott and her successor John Wroe.

The sect was part of a larger movement at that time generally referred to as British Israelism, which claimed that the British were descendants of the ten lost tribes of Israel referred to in the Bible. White soon asserted dominance over the sect and renamed it The New and Latter House of Israel.

He also changed his name to James Jershom Jezreel based on a vision that he had in a dream. Jezreel was the name of an ancient Israelite city located in the north of modern day Israel. By associating himself with the Bible in this way Jezreel granted himself the credentials he needed to assert that he was the next in a line of prophets to whom Wroe and Southcott belonged.

The triple J of his name captures the imagination – a classic memetic strategy to encourage transmission to more hosts; the alliteration is catchy and memorable; it feels nice in the mouth when spoken as well as good on the ears when heard. Jezreel is a clever memeplex.

The Jezreel cult is partly the result of the oversaturation of conventional Christianity in Europe by that point. The ubiquity of the Church in Europe meant that Christian practices had standardised into genres and ceased to evolve at any significant rate. In the face of this evolutionary atrophy the Jezreelites can be seen to demonstrate a proselytic zeal that emerges as an offshoot of mainstream Christianity - a new memetic species evolves.

Cults such as this often take up memes, such as the apocalyptic meme, that have lain dormant in mainstream religion and reactivate them. Jezreel built his cult upon the millenarian belief that a new era was soon coming to the world. Wroe and Southcott transmitted this same meme to their followers and despite the prophesied apocalypse failing to come Jezreel still successfully copied the strategy. The meme acquires people rather than people acquiring the meme. The apocalypse meme puts time pressure on members of the cult to proselytise and convert new hosts of the meme.

Experiment in 360° video using The Flying Roll logo - 
Use mouse or touchscreen to change direction of view

© John Walter 2019

Jezreel styled himself as God’s Messenger tasked with gathering the lost tribes of Israel together to enter the Kingdom of God. Heaven is another leveraging device for transmitting the religious meme “no non-hosts”. Jezreel is sometimes referred to as ‘The Sixth Trumpeter’ referring to a story in the Book of Revelation that seven angels will trumpet the arrival of the apocalypse, each one calling earthly sinners to repent with ever greater urgency.

Experiment using Insta360 OneX 360° camera and DaVinci Resolve software to edit video - 
Use mouse or touchscreen to change direction of view

© John Walter 2019

This accounts for why the trumpet features so heavily within the iconography of the Jezreelites. The logo for The Flying Roll depicts an aerial trumpet carrying a prophetic scroll capable of transmitting the Jezreelite meme to new hosts.

The logo is a clever meme that talks self-consciously about being a meme – this self-reflexivity might have helped contribute to its success. The Flying Roll was a real publication that the cult printed and sold internationally in order to promote their ideas.

It included the writings of Jezreel and Southcott as well as copies of Jezreelite hymns. The Flying Roll was so central to the activity of the cult that space for the printing presses was designed to go in the basement of the tower and built first in order to help generate further income. The Flying Roll is a great example of how the shift from spoken to written to printed word helped in giving fecundity, fidelity and longevity to memes such as these.

The Flying Roll, animation
© John Walter 2019

Modern transport also contributed to the proliferation of Jezreelite memes. A copy of The Flying Roll was acquired by Noah Drew, a farmer in Michigan, who went on to host Jezreel and his wife Queen Esther (nee Clarissa Rogers) on one of their many missionary tours of the New World. The couple travelled to The United States, Australia and New Zealand in order to gather followers for the sect and bring much needed financial assistance and labour back to Gillingham in order to help build the sanctuary.

On such missionary tours Jezreel would offer congregations what Aaron Lynch would refer to as “a package of belief attractants”, which included clan membership, being fed and given work and most of all a place beside God in the coming end of days. This was a desirable offer for many poor and struggling labouring folk.

Composite 360° video showing the possibility for building complex narratives using a single actor - 
Use mouse or touchscreen to change direction of view

© John Walter 2019

Noah Drew was one of the converts to liquidate his savings and donate them to the Jezreelite “treasury” and travel to Gillingham. He and other cult members were put to work on the farm around the site of the tower, known as Woodlands. In fact Jezreel was a savvy businessman who had erected a row of shops next to the site for the cult to make a living from, that included a butcher, a baker and a smithy.

Unlike other religious groups, such as the Amish, the Jezreelites did not immunise their membership against non-cult memes by restricting access to the outside world. Instead they employed singing, music and symbolic forms of meme proliferation – especially architecture – in order to conserve membership.

Musical performances by “Israel’s Band” were a popular feature of Jezreelite gatherings and encouraged non-members to attend. Branding religious ceremonies as entertainment has long been a memetic strategy for religious orders and the Jezreelites developed their own particular brand that favoured harps, piccolos and violins. Nevertheless the Jezreelites stood out against other people in Gillingham at that time. Their costume drew on Hassidic Jewish attire syphoned through Christian and Victorian fashions – for men a skull cap and long hair worn with strange pantaloons.

Gif of the cylindrical centre of the tower created in Tilt Brush - 
© John Walter 2019

Above all it was Jezreel’s Tower that was the grand project to unite followers and inspire them to work for the greater good of the cult. Architect Mr Margett proposed an adventurous steel-framed, brick building. The tower would be fireproof – not just useful during the apocalypse but also for Victorian life in general – and a circular hydraulic platform in the centre of the building could be raised and lowered for preaching and choral performances.

The space was vast. Later attempts at demolition proved very difficult. It was supposed to house the prophesied 144,000 followers for the Day of Judgment but more likely had capacity for 5000. Jezreel was fixated on the number 144,000, which derived from 12,000 each of the 12 tribes of Israel who were said in the bible to be “sealed” in heaven (Southcott had offered wax-sealed prophecies to believers in a related gesture).

Unfortunately for Jezreel the proportions of the tower ended up only being an approximation of this sacred geometry due to financial limitations and the standard measurements of building materials at the time. Each side was 124 feet and 6 inches (38.5 metres) and the height at the corners 120 feet (36.5 metres). To give you some contemporary comparison the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern is 115ft high – so Jezreel’s Tower was a significant structure. The architecture of the tower can be seen as a variant of the contemporary Gothic Revival memeplex. It was crenelated and featured prominent motifs in the brickwork – the flying roll of course, but also the crossed swords and the triple feather motif of the Prince of Wales – a reference to The Holy Trinity.

Model of Jezreel’s Tower on show at the Panacea Society in Bedford. 

Jezreel died from a heart attack in 1885. His heavy drinking is well documented. At the time of his death the foundations for the tower were built but the cornerstone had not yet been laid. He never got to see his vision completed. In the wake of Jezreel’s death a leadership battle occurred between Esther and a Scottish contender James Cumming.

Esther won but this was not without its controversies. She was considered a flamboyant and reckless woman, renowned for travelling around Gillingham in a horse-drawn carriage carrying a mace – hence the epithet Queen. She was not popular.

In imagining Esther in my mind’s eye I have frequently wondered if she was like Ma Anand Sheela, the former spokeswoman for the Rajneesh movement shown recently in the Netflix documentary series Wild Wild Country? Probably in part because of her charisma and determination Esther was an effective lead host for the Jezreelite meme. However, membership of the sect suffered as a result of Jezreel’s death but it did not disband.

One of the disillusioned was Noah Drew who requested his investment in the cult back. Esther refused his demand. Drew and his wife, who were elderly at this point, were exiled from the cult to poor lodgings nearby. This culminated in a riot and the police being called. The reputation of the cult suffered locally as a consequence.

The leader of the Rajneesh cult Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh with its spokeswoman Ma Anand Sheela.

A good portion of the tower was built by the time Esther died in 1897. Leadership of the cult split between Esther’s brother and “Prince Michael” a cult member from Detroit. The line of prophecy kept getting passed on and mutated each time. A later incarnation came in the form of Octavia (Mabel Barltrop) who established a version of the Southcottian, apocalyptic cult in Bedford known as the Panacea Society.

During the Edwardian period The Panacea Society were responsible for campaigning to have Southcott’s box of prophecies opened. They printed posters and placed adverts in Piccadilly Circus, on London buses and in other prominent locations. They even went to the lengths of preparing bedrooms in Bedford to host the 24 Anglican Bishops prophesied by Southcott to pray around the box before opening it. Today the Panacea Museum contains interesting exhibits about all the figures mentioned here.

A recreation of an Edwardian poster asking for Joanna Southcott’s box to be opened, pasted on the side of The Panacea Museum in Bedford. 

How does my film fit into this inheritance? The tower itself, as an architectural object, is at the centre of my interest. It’s hard to imagine now but Jezreel’s Tower was a significant British landmark during the first half of the twentieth century. So much so that it featured in a striking illustration by Tristram Hillier for Shell because it would have been recognisable to members of the public.

As an image the tower, and other Jezreelite symbols such as the flying roll, appeal to me as memetic cells that can be reprogrammed to transmit different memes than they were initially designed for. In this sense the film will be a memeplex about a memeplex, an artwork that can reflect on itself and its own construction. I suppose my aim for the film is to engineer a new memetic variant – one that talks about religious proselytism without doing it. Perhaps I am transmitting the Jezreel’s Tower meme by telling its story again in a different form? The building is the protagonist – an enigmatic mix of styles and functions that was a ruin from the outset – a folly by default.

An experimental drawing of Jezreel’s Tower created in Tilt Brush
Use mouse or touchscreen to change direction of view

© John Walter 2019

Virtual Reality has opened up a new terrain within which memes can spread. VR has been around for over thirty years although many people are only now gaining access to it, myself included, because the technology has come down in price as industry has found an affordable and efficient way to manufacture it.

What interests me about the space of VR is that it is hybrid. It is a gaming space, an architectural space, a collage space and a painting space simultaneously. To use it simply as an illustrative space seems limiting to me. The companies who make the hardware, such as Oculus, and the software, such as Google who make Tilt Brush, control the limitations within which we experience VR.

Hito Steyerl has criticised this spherical space as “bubble vision” and linked it to the information bubble that we experience nowadays through targeted adverts and algorithms editing our social media feed. However, I believe that it is not all bad. The virtual meme opens us up to understand our own human consciousness in a new and profound way, showing us the architecture of our imbalance and our challenging our perceptual limitations to evolve.

How Jezreel’s Tower would have looked upon completion 
© John Walter 2019

Further information:
P.G. Rogers, The Sixth Trumpeter – The Story of Jezreel and His Tower (1963), Oxford University Press
The Panacea Museum, Bedford
Ruth Windscheffel, The Jezreelites and their World 1875-1922 (2017), IB Taurus
Aaron Lynch, Thought Contagion (1998), Basic Books
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (1976), Oxford University Press
Claire McGlasson, The Rapture (2019), Faber & Faber
Jaron Lanier, Dawn of the New Everything: Encounters with Reality and Virtual Reality (2018), Macmillan USA
Hito Steyerl Bubble Vision on YouTube