April 18, 2025 → April 20, 2025
Friday: 13:00-17:45
Saturday, Sunday: 12:00-17:00
Opening/vernissage:
April 18, 2025, 13:00-17:45
IMAGE
Press image
TEXT
A solo show by Mathias Westbrook at the Ping-Pong Room located in the castle grounds courtyard of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.
Liturgy of Sacred Circuits is a meditation on the spiritual implications of computer-generated pseudo-randomness. Its essence is centered on a ritualistic activation of a real-time rendered game world, as the computer takes on the role of the player during the course of the exhibition. This is framed by an intertwined installation of sculpture, prints and found objects.
The works incorporate references from a range of occult and spiritual concepts, namely the framework and symbolism of chaos magick and a (Western) historical practice of divination. A central motif in the show’s concept is that of a dowsing rod: a conventional Y-shaped twig believed to be capable of locating subterranean water and rare minerals by reacting to supposed “electromagnetic vibrations”. In the realm of this liturgy the rod transforms into a “real” device via technological augmentation. Discarded electronics become sacred relics divorced from their original purposes, as computer-generated worlds become analogous to heavenly and metaphysical realms.
Liturgy of Sacred Circuits is contextualised as part of a larger multimedia worldbuilding project by Mathias Westbrook. The intention is to explore a more speculative evolved state of computerised algorithms and the resulting emerging mythos replacing conventional discourse. This is primarily worked through archetypal characters that represent different esoteric lenses and attitudes towards algorithmic spirituality. Liturgy of Sacred Circuits invokes the aspect of The Pseudo-Sorcerer: a hermitical character dedicated to using divination as a means to understand and be guided by ‘the algorithm’ - an immaterial ecosystem it believes to be so complex and beyond human understanding, that it must be seen through a pseudo-spiritual lens.