At the dawn of the digital era, the relationship between creativity and mystics in virtual environments becomes an attractive tool for emotional transcendence, which lays the foundations of our drive for an explorative exercise:
Where do we evoke the feeling of faith?
Furthermore, how does the context of a society shape its faith? How does AI merge with classic religious narratives? What will belief systems look like in 2050? Are we going to be governed by data? What if we defy our mortality and end up in the cloud?
From consumerism to creativity or artistic expression, to fulfill emotional needs, technologic progress offers new forms and tools for spiritual practice and affects classic religions that need to adapt to the new channels.
The ‘cult of the self’ and the simultaneous adoration of other entities are looming alongside with other dualities, in a place where you become both follower and prophet: a temple for all syncretism, the liminal maze known as “on-line”.
Digital means Liminal, because, given the opportunity for new rites to emerge, further belief systems to develop and submit ourselves to a liquid, malleable state of ambiguity; duality is projected by opening channels between the perceivable and the ineffable.
Layers of belief systems have been coexisting and sedimenting in our quest of meaning and cultural heritage, from animism, theistic beliefs, to secularisation, which have provided the foundations of the first digital, global society.
We started to explore the digital space in search of emerging meaning systems, how they are built and how they affect creativity and how they emerged in form of cults, religions, adorations or movements, such as:
Celebritheism and the oligarchy of influencers; Dataism and Factfulness – has information become the supreme value? Growthism and the search for constant self-improvement; Technologic and Digital Cults such as the church of AI, the prophecy of Singularity and the Transhumanist movements.
We envision the following decades as a period to keep formulating this kind of question. In a transitional expedition, we intend to harvest these questions by entering the limbo of liminal technologies.
The First Supper will aggregate pieces of space-time to explore, meditate, review, believe, discuss and dive in all things spiritual, digital and creative through all senses and sensors.
Atem