THE REALM OF THE UNSEN is an interactive botfarm that, using the chassis of an actual Chinese manufactured phone farm, allows participants to dock their phones in submission to a multi-screen interface managed by the artist. Once docked, the phones of participants are remotely guided to YouTube by the artist where they are simultaneously left to play various Chapters of the Qur’an over Cosmic stock footage – a popular video genre of early Islamic Youtube. Thus producing a symphony of simultaneously reciting mobile devices.

 In the early internet era, many Muslims took the belief that leaving the Qur’an playing in their houses whilst away, brought angels to the house from the Realm of The Unseen, blessing their homes in their absence. This sacralisation, rooted in syncretic talismanic practices from the pre-modern Islamic world, usually held the belief that any verses of the Qur’an in written or printed forms held innate blessings and cosmic attraction. However with the dawn of electronic devices, this sacralisation increasingly imposed itself on digital devices that simulate talismanic functions.

The work speculates on the increasing relation between the technological unseen and the spiritual unseen, the cooperation between Jinn (made from fire) and semi-conscious digital ‘bot’ agents (made from burning fossil fuels and electric heat). Gilbert Simondon’s theory that magic bifurcated into religious and then technological practice fills gaps here that perhaps blindly technopositive Muslim attitudes haven’t quite yet filled. Where Bergson spoke of the question of whether the spirit might be mechanised by technology or if technology might be spiritualised; this participatory work tests the theory that in actuality, both might be happening.