Light a [Digital] Candle
Added to the Museum of Data by Marica Rizzo on Wednesday, December 15, 2021. Museum of Data Collection ID: 914.
Public description: This object is a series of digital candles on Gratefulness.org's "Light a Candle" page. According to the count on the website homepage, 22,170,045 candles have been lit from 194 countries. The website is run by a registered nonprofit charity in the U.S.A and includes resources encouraging visitors to 'live gratefully'. The "Light a Candle" practice takes the physical act of lighting the candle online. It places this practice in the context of reflection - leaving any spiritual, dedication or perhaps religious context to the individual visitor. The "Light a Candle" page can be found under the "Practice" menu and includes this description: "Throughout the world, lighting candles is a sacred ritual. We light a candle for many purposes: to illuminate darkness, dedicate prayers, solidify intentions, offer blessings, evoke Spirit, and/or to nourish grateful living." Visitors are invited to click an unlit candle and are then taken through a series of steps that encourage the visitor to pause, reflect on why they are lighting the candle, selecting an unlit candle and literally clicking the wick to light it. Once lit, you are given the option to open a 'mini candle' that can stay on your desk top and will stay lit for 48 hours. The digital candle, in many ways, is a mimic of a physical candle. The temporary nature of a candle seems is embodied by the digital candle, giving it a sense of 'realness'. Said another way, one would not necessarily "believe" it to be a true candle if it did not eventually shrink and expire.
Materials used: The digital candles, and the website where they are kept, was built by a website agency using Wordpress and Javascript. The 'mini candle' that can remain open on the desktop was built by a custom function that slowly 'expires' the candle over 48 hours.
Credit: The "Light a Candle" is owned by A Network for Grateful Living, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in the U.S.A. Their website can be found at www.gratefulness.org The website and "Light a Candle" functionality was built by the agency, Briteweb
Language: Chinese, English, Italian, German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, and Russian
Size: The candles, when shown in a 'gallery' view begin at about 1.5 inches in height and a quarter of an inch wide. They burn for 48 hours and slowly reduce in size over that time frame, until they disappear. The "mini candle" that is optional to have open on your desktop is responsive in size, meaning it takes up the size of the window that contains it, and can be resized to take up as much or as little space on the desktop as you'd like.
Creation date: 2014/11/30 00:00:00
External link: https://gratefulness.org/light-a-candle/
Tags: 8, 14