2013
The project of creating a system of Prayers
“I noticed that we were becoming increasingly lazy, delegating an increasing number of services to outside providers. To help free up prayer time for believers, I created an online system allowing to entrust the recitation of a prayer to a religious professional, according to your own faith. Simply send your prayer to be recited by an expert in the subject.
Arsen Eca, the innovative and subversive artist, has designed a unique digital system that sits at the intersection of technology and spirituality. This system, a form of digital intercession, allows individuals to automatically transmit a prayer to what it calls a “religious operator.”
The process is simple and accessible: a person chooses their religious operator (whether a priest, an imam, a rabbi, a Buddhist monk, etc.) and the message prayer is received directly on the phone of this religious professional. Eca’s idea is to centralize access to the prayers of all religions on a single page, a concept that parodies both the trivialization of the sacred and the potential universality of religious beliefs in the digital age. div>
But the artist didn’t stop there. Anticipating the rapid evolution of technology, Eca modernized the system. Professional religious operators have been replaced by artificial intelligences, creating an automated and mechanized form of spirituality.
While this system is infused with Eca’s signature humor, it raises serious questions about the role of technology in our spiritual and religious practices, and how we negotiate the boundary between the sacred and the secular in the digital age.
