IUDICIUM

In this multimedia installation, Zach Blas reflects on how new technology affects us, both as individuals and as a community, and the role of spirituality in the age of artificial intelligence. In his recent body of work, which includes Iudicium, Zach Blas explores a religious un/conscious thriving in today’s tech industry.

For this installation, the artist conjures an occult symbology that addresses the religious beliefs and dispositions that undergird Silicon Valley’s approach to judgment. Creating imagery with computer graphics and a soundtrack generated by machine learning, Blas explores a computational world of divine judgment, where artificial intelligence exists alongside corporate gods, mystical glyphs, religious icons, occult sigils and captured bodies.

Inspired by Michelangelo’s famous fresco The Last Judgment (1535–1541) as well as the puzzle box in Clive Barker’s horror film Hellraiser, Blas creates a chapel-like space in which to consider the emergence of an AI religiosity, where immortality and transcendence are offered to an elite class and control is promised for the rest.