Analyzing Divine Machinery as an "Art Movement"

[00:00:02]In 2003, I promise this is going somewhere. Shilpa Gupta created the website blessed bandwidth.net. It came with the promise of having the ability to bless those who were lucky enough to stumble upon it. This is what the main page looked like. This is extremely normal. Something of note is that at the top it says, "You have been located at IP address.

[00:00:23]You have been located from the United States. Do not panic. You are being watched." In order to navigate further, you have to choose your religion.

[00:00:31]Because none of the options really applied to me, I just picked the first option. It came up with a popup letting me confirm if I accepted state control.

[00:00:40]So, naturally, I pressed okay. It came up with a brief description of the temple telling me that the person who made the website went out to the physical location of the temple and requested an internet network cable be blessed. The same cable plugged into the server that allows the site to run. She even provides proof. Ooh, how nice.

[00:00:59]Seems legit. So, I went ahead and clicked the link.

[00:01:04]Sit straight. Don't lean.

[00:01:11]Bend slowly forward.

[00:01:13]Concentrate.

[00:01:19]Now, touch your forehead to the computer screen on the spawn X.

[00:01:31]Hooray! Hooray!

[00:01:33]>> After that, you have access to a little certificate along with different downloadable wallpapers of water from Holy Rivers. Outside of just the blessings, you can have access to a confession diary, a closet that lets you dress up a religious leader or god of your choice, and there are many other extremely interesting things that deserve a more in-depth analysis. But the thing that is most eerie and unnatural, as if any of this was natural to begin with, is that between 2003 and 2013, you could download God.

[00:02:08]What I have done so far is try my best to show what it would have looked like if it didn't shut down in 2013. All we have is some screenshots and what little is archived in the Wayback Machine because downloadable attachments and stuff. We got some partial lost media in our hands, ladies and gentlemen. I know you little goblins love to eat that [ __ ] God.exe was an application that lived on your desktop. It doesn't really look like God the way us westerners might imagine him. He's shown to be more abstract, and you can assume that he's meant to be outside of our human comprehension. I wasn't able to actually get the link to work in the Wayback Machine. So, the best I can do is relay what the creator said about what it did.

[00:02:49]quote, "It comes and lives on your machine for 15 days, and while it is on your computer, it tells you all kinds of instructions. Feed me, love me, and click here." It opens your CD tracer. It sort of behaves and misbehaves and becomes more and more demanding as it goes on in those 15 days. It's God, then it reincarnates. God one becomes God two and then one becomes jealous of the other and you in the end delete it.

[00:03:20]>> I am the most logical person and what have I done?

[00:03:24]>> This is what the CEO of directing.com said. The owner of the server that the artist Shilpa Gupta plugged in the blessed network cable that launched the website. Yes, this was a internet art project. Art that can only exist in the medium of the worldwide web. The website was designed to address issues of state control and religion. Not only has she acknowledged this in an interview with Pip Lawrenson, but it's exemplified by the hooded women holding rifles that will appear randomly across the website in the [ __ ] scammy ass pop-ups. Gupta said that she was interested in the new power that the internet could provide for the art world. She believed it to be a more democratic way of sharing spiritual experiences and she explored this new frontier in many of her internet artworks. 2003 was still in this awkward phase between web 1.0 and web 2.0. This is a time of digital sublimity. A term coined by Vincent Moscow and expanded upon in his book the digital sublime myth power and cyerspace where humans are just starting to grapple with the effects of the information age and how it came without warning. Never before have humans created something that made them so dependent on it but so fearful of it except maybe religion. And I want to argue that this perspective of religion and technology is not crazy. It existed before divine machinery as an online aesthetic. And it makes sense why it has affected so many people more than just visual candy. We like to believe that technology and spirituality are exclusive to one another. However, works like blessed bandwidth challenge that and it makes us uncomfortable.

[00:05:09]But for some feel at home. A quote that kept popping up in my brain while I was writing this video was one written by EM Forester. The machine feeds us and clothes us and houses us. Through it we speak to one another. Through it we see one another. In it we have our being.

[00:05:30]The machine is the friend of ideas and the enemy of superstition. The machine is omnipotent, eternal. Blessed is the machine.

[00:05:40]He wrote that in 1909.

[00:05:58]Yeah, I will be talking about things of this nature at length. The last thing I want to do is glamorize or fetishize uh real life mental illnesses. No matter how hard I try, this video will inevitably kind of be targeted to or be appealing to people who have distanced themselves from religious organizations, agnostics, atheists, or just people that are interested in religion and mythology. I am not claiming anything about God. I am just here as an observer analyzing general themes of a very specific genre of art on the internet.

[00:06:32]Uh, real quick because someone is going to ask this thing. I literally just got this. There used to be a little sound panel right here, but I didn't like the way it looked. I guess it was stuck. So when I pulled it down, it the corner hit me. Like the piece of wood hit me. So yeah, it'll be there for the whole video. Gore. Gore warning. Defining an art movement. I think the reason why divine machinery stood out to me so much is because I I didn't really get it like it affected me. Yes. And I knew I really liked it. But the hard thing about internet stuff is that I can't really show you what I have seen unless you've already been algorithmically fed this label. But whenever someone asks me what is it, I always just show them this video. Credits to Celeste. This is their work, not mine. Here's a link. This is not mine. I hope they're okay with me showing this part. It is on the public worldwide web. So maybe they're okay.

[00:07:16]They have not been answering my DMs. I really hope this is okay. I'm not going to show all of it. Credits to Celeste.

[00:07:19]This is not my work.

[00:07:20]>> God is in the circuits of your television. God is a man-made creature.

[00:07:24]Let's build it. God can be salvaged from this machine. God is right there. Can't you see it? Can't you see God? You're not looking hard enough. God is green and paper thin. Don't you see? God is a machine. God is in your fingertips.

[00:07:38]Craft God carefully. You don't want a God that hates you, right? Make your God. It's in the machines. You're not looking hard enough. Craft your God.

[00:07:46]Give God a heart, a ventricle, a button to turn on and off. Things like that that I initially don't get are sometimes the most interesting things for me to learn about and research and talk about.

[00:07:58]I like to be one over. What can I say?

[00:08:00]If we want to define divine machinery as an art movement, we have to kind of examine what an art movement is. Well, it's not divine machinery, that's for sure. Art movements, they're kind of tough. Um, scholars are still debating on whether one, if there ever will be art movements past, postmodern, and two, if we really should be looking at art movements as the canon way of viewing art history. But there's just a lot of reasons why even post internet can't work for divine machinery. All art movements can fall into one or two categories. an artistic reaction to a change in society or artists reinterpreting that art, making a visual retrospective. Although this aesthetic, in my opinion, has a shared history and a point of origin, is not a contained time period or set of artists. Also, no manifesto. People do not make manifestos like they used to, unless they're like the uni bomber. And there hasn't been a manifesto since. So, I'm sorry. The title not entirely accurate. That's why it's in quotations. More like I want to analyze the general visual motifs, history, and different philosophy and themes of this online aesthetic. I think I'm safe in saying that that's what people usually think of when you say art movements, but whatever. So, let's talk about the visual components of divine machinery. According to the aesthetics wiki, they say that it is quote mostly related to Christianity parenthesis, especially Catholicism, parenthesis end quote. But honestly, I disagree. I just think that it so happens to be the most common faith in the world. And just by circumstance, we see more things about it. I don't think it's a visual aspect or component of the genre. I mean, I just talked about Gupta. Whatever. The wiki is good though. The wiki is good though. Anyways, I'm just going to disregard what I just said. If you have ever come across any version of this aesthetic, you have probably seen this image. Well, believe it or not, this is a real life actual in real life art piece. It's by the Slovenian artist Stain Yagodich >> called Contemporary >> Golgo Gotha, a part of his digital constructivism series. This is a series that he had worked on for a number of years. He originally started out some of his multimedia pieces with X-ray art.

[00:10:22]And holy [ __ ] he's got a lot of different kinds of art. You can already see little pieces of Christian iconography here all over his website even like Blessed Bandwidth. It's hard for me not to tie in the time period that this was made with my experience of viewing it. This was 1999 where many homes still access the internet through dialup. The scope of how far the internet would invade our lives hadn't even been fully realized. But Stain looked at the world of the '9s and made art directly to serve as a warning against the blurring lines of worship and the rapid growth of technology. This piece to me perfectly encapsulates the visual motifs of the aesthetic because what before is just a motherboard and a crucifix combined recontextualizes both of the icons that we know so well in our modern day. Just goes to show that at the time it might just seem like random assortment of [ __ ] piled together, but some Pinterest person might think it's cool and stumble upon it. But why this? Why not this? If the artist's intent was to criticize our worship and idealization of computers and tech and stuff, why not this? This came out just a year before he made his artwork. Well, I talked partially about this idea in my eco brutalist video, if that's still even up. I'm still dealing with copyright [ __ ] But I think the current ways people are thinking about art, subconsciously or not, they want honesty from their art. And I think Divine Machinery uncovers this well-kept veil of simplicity and minimalism that many corporations have worked very hard to keep. It exposes this gross underbelly of it all. It is the insides of something that you originally have only seen from the outside and the uncomfortable feeling that the interior is much more detailed than you initially thought. Now, let me ask you, what do you notice about this piece? You know what? What do all of these share in common visually? Well, I will tell you, dumbass. It's hyperdetail. Not like hyperdetail. Hyperdetail like as in there is a lot of it. Very dense in things. There's forests of wires, overcrowded motherboards. It's so full of stuff that it can almost be unsettling. This isn't all of what can be under this label. There are images like these, but I will talk about them later. I want to make a risky argument and say that the crucifix is not the only spiritual motif of this piece, but also this the density of detail. No, I do not think that Stain had this in mind when he slapped Jesus on a computer, but I do find it interesting. Horvacqui is a term art historians and professors will say a lot incorrectly you think. Horvaci is a Latin term and it literally translates to the fear of empty space. I first heard it in my intro to art history course as like a literal vocab word to remember where almost all religious artworks are spiritually drawn to detail their pieces with a lot of stuff because according to Matthew 12:43-45 the devil infiltrates empty spaces and to fill that empty space is a protective measure against corruption. What a [ __ ] slam dunk, right? According to way too many people, this can be applied to insular art, medieval art, Islamic art, Tibetan art, this and this and this. I'm not thinking right now because Muslims famously even listen to what Matthew had to say about Satan. Horvaci is a western term and it would be disingenuous for me to apply it to divine machinery. It's funny because there's so many articles that will just confidently tell you that Islamic architecture is horacqu and that is simply not true. This is a rant by the way. Horvacqui implies ornamentation for the sake of ornamentation. You can't just apply meaning or artist intent without confirming it. The only real artwork that we can do this for is the book of Kels. But lots of scholars have talked about the symbolism of the ornamentation of the book of Kels. So what I'm getting most of this argument from this very good essay by this person or is not the correct term. I wanted to catch that before things got crazy.

[00:14:57]There is however an interesting connection between religion and this visual aspect horvacquesque art style like this piece. If you look at the most popular artworks from like the major religions, it's hard not to pick up this hyperdetailed employed in the detail. This could be due to economic or political reasons. I know this and there are lots of organized religions that don't do this. They do the opposite even. But it just happens enough. This goes beyond organized faiths. Why is psychedelic art recognized as being that? Wikipedia said it. So, or the examples I >> This [ __ ] got corrupted. Artists with schizophrenia trying to visualize it.

[00:15:43]>> They depict the world in a much more detailed way than what might be realistically seen by people without hallucinations. Remember this. All I'm saying is that a spiritual experience can come from things like this. In some cases, it's not even visual. It's auditorial. Like sildo >> babel pronounced babel. It's a tower of radios all tuned into different stations from all over the world. Together, it forms this giant pillar of just unintelligible noise, clearly symbolizing its name, the Tower of Babel, pronounced Babel. And I guess you could try to single out like one voice from all of the mess. But when you stand back, you are overwhelmed with the wealth of information. And that is what digital sublimity mentioned earlier is all about. Information that can be dissected. And despite things like divine machinery looking like mindless chaos, whether you like it or not, there is order to the chaos reflecting our own experiences with the internet. An anxiety of hyperinformation. Um, that's literally just bad wire management. But what are we just a motherboard?

[00:17:02]Shut the [ __ ] up.

[00:17:05]You are so annoying. Believe it or not, there is an odd amount of divine machinery, like specifically divine machinery haters that I have run into.

[00:17:14]And I want to be nice because I too did not understand it at the beginning. But like, sure, you win. If you want to be a loser about it, this beautiful sunset really is sun moving behind the earth.

[00:17:26]Wow. To me, this is like a group of people admiring a gorgeous work of art and then a Redditor in the back saying, "Uh, what's the big deal?" That's literally just colored oils on a canvas.

[00:17:40]Like, sure, you win. Congrats. You're so you are so intelligent. Something I will sympathize with though is that if your entire career uh is to make sure things do not look like this, yeah, it could be kind of hard. Yeah, I get that. just feel cringe. But you're telling me that there is nothing uncanny to you about things like this? Well, what do you say you uh open up your arms for me? Let's take a look inside. You have bad wire management. You should probably tear that out. Tear it out. Tear it out. Tear it out. Tear it out. Tear it out.

[00:18:20]Video Cults Rainw World uses the visual similarities between technology and biology to its advantage. Are those chains, vines, wires? Well, I think that's kind of the point. It all sort of looks the same. You play as this thing, a slug cat, as you traverse the longabandoned mega structure that once belonged to an industrialized society, a literal speck in a story that is much bigger and older than you. Rather than exploring the ecosystem from the outside, you have to traverse the insides of the machine. It personifies the function of the machine and its computers. Through this lens, industrialization looks more organic. No location illustrates this better than the location of Five Pebbles. Lines of code scatter across the wall as if you're in the CPU of an old '8s computer. And it is just that, a literal supercomput that you are crawling through. A sentient supercomput at that. And this guy is the physical embodiment of Five Pebbles, a biomchanical AI that has the one goal of expanding its computer no matter the amount of resources that it takes. You know, I never actually played the game.

[00:19:49]I am a chronic cold feet spender and I am very busy. They see my motion yet they expect me to stand still. But it has been a challenge to find a video game that both narratively fits divine machinery and ambiently because I believe divine machinery is more than the literal combination of the two definitions. Divine machine. I'm sure someone will remind me Matanoui from Bionicle series is both a god and robot.

[00:20:17]Therefore, it fits that actually.

[00:20:21]>> Yeah. You know what? There there is a very good argument there. In all of the media of divine machinery that I have watched or played, there's a few different popular ways in fiction to go all about all this. One, God or angels just so happen to be machine or biomechanical. Two, humans decide to worship an AI or machines as if it were God. Three, AI achieves god-level intelligence and consciousness. Four, God moves to or becomes dependent on a machine. Five, humans upload their consciousness into a machine or interface. Six, human tries to create God. Seven, human makes a machine, disappears, and the machine becomes gods or the humans therefore by proxy become gods. Eight, human becomes God by means of computer or the internet. Remember this one. Nine, digital spirits. And 10, others. And then there's some overlap with cyberpunk themes of trying to use your brain as a literal computer. These things are not exclusive to one another.

[00:21:21]There's some overlap. up. Yes. The reason why I bring this up is because there are cases that I believe fit underneath this aesthetic label that's more than just God robot duo cuz I don't believe that's the most important thing to look at here. To me, what makes Rainworld, specifically Five Pebbles, so unique from other shows and movies, is that it conveys themes of unstoppable machines taking over atmospheres in a literal way. It takes clear inspiration from blame pronounced blam. A self- constructing city that can expand infinitely for no clear purpose besides that's what humans programmed it to do.

[00:22:00]Typically, we think of biology reclaiming industrialization in a lot of media. I have talked about this, but in blame pronounced blam, it feels like machinery spreads at the same rate that plants do. Five pebbles is supposed to be the physical representation of if a computer became an unstoppable force achieving godlike levels of intelligence and material power. Rather than what we might expect that it furthers itself from looking like biology, it starts to look more like it. As time passes in this world and in ours, the line we put in our minds between the mechanical, biological, and even theological blur.

[00:22:42]Per chance, this is why I like Zerg tree so much. They are one of my favorites.

[00:22:47]This type of infection takes a more philosophical approach. A Nam Jun Pikes TV Buddha There exists multiple versions of this piece, but it was first shown in 1974. I hope this can show why I did not think that the constellation between divinity and machinery is exclusive to the Catholics. If it isn't clear, it is a camera recording a statue of Buddha and then broadcasting it to the screen just in front of the statue. It's an endless observation cycle. The camera watches the statue, the statue watches the screen, and then us, the viewers, watch the loop unfold. Chat, is this real? To me, it makes me wonder if it was designed to raise questions about consciousness. If we interpret the figure as a representation of an enlightened spiritual being, is he aware that he is being recorded? It's like a cat in the mirror situation. Does it know that it is? This might be a stretch in terms of what the artist intended because this is only coming from the Nam Jun Pike Art Center. Oh, that's embarrassing. His name is most definitely pronounced Pike. I'm just kind of pronouncing it the way his American friends pronounced it.

[00:24:15]>> Breaking the rules together. Pike was always making something new. But according to them, Pike believed that it was integral to the piece that the audience members would lean in to try and see what the Buddha was watching. In doing so, they would see their own reflection in the screen. This is what Pike sought, an electric environment that is unclosed and attracts participation of the audience. That one's online self is just as important to their identity as their body. To quote him, "Skin has become inadequate to interfacing with reality. Technology has become the body's new member of existence." We like to pretend that the mind is above bodily needs and corruption, but this is not true. Even for me, my memory feels more and more unreliable, and I want a more pure version of thinking or keeping my memory. This is an idea presented in the machine divine thoughts on embodying the omnipotence of digital realms by Gelena Guga. We don't even have to rely on our own processing power when our memories can be remembered in code and JPEGs. The creation of the internet only furthers these two definitions of body and mind.

[00:25:37]And in that separation, something new fills the void. how we present ourselves online. Pike, he predicted a lot about the internet. Remember this was the 70s, but he is the guy that coined the term the electronic superighway. We don't really use that term anymore, but I swear to God, this is cool. He also talked a lot about personalized content and the internet's ability to serve as a way of individualistic expression. And in that aspect in regards to TV Buddha, it is one-way communication. He believed that the TV was a dictatorial medium and we the audience are under its authority.

[00:26:22]We live in a world where nothing is made but a reaction to the machine. It's like a fungal growth that overlays our experience of nature, our anatomy, our psyche, and the inevitable conclusion of that infection to a place where we thought was free from scientific progress. Religion. Anyways, rest in peace, Pike.

[00:26:47]>> Budda, wake up.

[00:26:52]Pike's artwork, although fascinated with the power of the internet and electronic communication, is a pessimistic outlook, while blessed bandwidth mentioned before, is an optimistic outlook. I mean, at least according to these quotes, uh I'm not sure if she feels this way today. Divine machinery today, rather than existing as a movement in a certain time period, it's kind of like a meta movement in my eyes. It's a retrospective on the early existential crisis of the blurring lines between reality and the digital world. Things like the Matrix, the 13th floor, this another thing, Eveong Gallion, I can't remember, but there's lots of examples all cover these themes heavily. Now to view all of this from the outside perspective will summarize and streamline the visuals and aesthetics of it all and give you all of this. It is not a faithful recreation of the past but a reinterpretation.

[00:27:55]Divine machinery acknowledges that it is in fact on the internet that we are computer people. 20 years later, the new networks of machines seemed to offer a way to construct a real alternate reality. Not just one that was chemically induced, but a space that actually existed in a parallel dimension to the real world.

[00:28:20]And like with acid, cyerspace could be a place where you would be liberated from the old corrupt hierarchies of politics and power and explore new ways of being.

[00:28:32]To me, a lot of posts under this label come off as almost like a satire that people who make this type of content don't actually believe this, but it is mythologizing our current sometimes depressing situation. This goes beyond just technology. It also shares with the religious iconography I mentioned earlier. Izzy Bilkis said in her article, quote, "It reflects the enduring influence of Christian iconography in the Western world where even secular spaces are shaped by its visual language." Y'all, y'all ever hear of the word uh anemia.

[00:29:11]>> Animoa.

[00:29:12]>> It is a good word. Animia.

[00:29:15]>> Animoa.

[00:29:16]Animoa. One of one of my favorites, especially if you want to describe the obsession with vibes and aesthetics and style. Y'all ever come across that one Australian clothing aesthetic? That's just racism. Anneonia is a new word that defines a nostalgia for a time or era that you yourself have never lived. We, us, me and you, we all long for an era of computers before RGB lights. There's images that are labeled divine machinery that don't really fit the visual noise I was talking about earlier, but it does however have a reminiscent certain early internet low res look to it almost every single time. It kind of presents itself as older and maybe even more naive that we are back in like this era, something that like your delusional ass grandma might post on a private forum or some [ __ ] often it has some type of poetry or like a cults popup thing. And you could say this is just a different type of analog horror, which I got to say I'm not the biggest fan of, but I think these old internet screenshots like this create this sort of innocence and to me at least, and there's a reason why this is the end of the video, uh, psychosis.

[00:30:33]If we view this as a reflection on and the persisting anxiety of the digital revolution, no other piece of media over video games, horror, anime, movies, whatever the [ __ ] epitomizes divine machinery better than serial experiments lane.

[00:30:52]Everything that I have said or can say about divine machinery, Lane has already said that is why I am talking about it here. For all I am concerned, every modern post under this aesthetic on Pinterest, Tik Tok, Instagram, Tumblr might as well in my eyes just be fan art of Laneart running on July 6th, 1998. It was directed by >> But Lane as a concept and character was really the brainchild of UA. There's a game, a concept album, graphic novels.

[00:31:25]The character is kind of meant to go beyond mediums.

[00:31:30]or just AB was the original character designer for Lane and designed the style and look of the anime that is so iconic today. Shout out to Dungeon Chill for finding and roughly translating this section of the visual experiments lane art book that they said that the insistence of the shots of power lines in this show help illustrate that people are always connected in the subconscious realm. Tokyo has actually tried to initiate a bill that puts the power lines underground, but only in touristy areas. Even looking up into the sky, we see a cage of wires and poles. And Serial Experiments Lane, the anime, uh, is weird. When I rewatched this, I literally was watching the show and on the other tab I had a fan wiki and on another tab an analysis of each episode break like a breakdown. Like every single line of dialogue and [ __ ] is like just a fever dream to me.

[00:32:26]>> Anyway, no matter how often I say I didn't do it, you're still going to believe that I did. So instead, I'll make it so that it never really happened.

[00:32:35]>> What?

[00:32:35]>> And I've been working practically day and night to be able to do just that.

[00:32:39]What the [ __ ] >> What are you talking about?

[00:32:46]>> So, huge, huge spoilers ahead, but I want to quickly summarize so everyone's on the same page. It's going to be a lot.

[00:32:55]Oh. Oh, my head.

[00:33:00]Anyways, let's analyze the show. A good starting off point is the episode called Religion. I talked a lot already about technology and religion being like this fungal growth, but Lane adds a new layer, religious psychosis, schizophrenia, and dissociation generally just and now I have to do that [ __ ] I'm not an expert on any of these things. And to Lane fans, I am not claiming that she is any or any one thing. But if we want to understand this art movement to its fullest, I think it's an important thing to address at least in this episode. Lane becomes more consumed than ever with her modifications to her Nav'i system with the goal of transcending through the wired. As the show goes on, light barely enters her room and the cooling system literally floods her living space. This episode shows a radical personality change in Lane that's reminiscent of how cult members fall further into obsessions with their own version of reality. Her friends realize this. Her family realizes this. Her dad practically begs her to come away from these delusions kind of because her family's fake. I don't know. But as she presses on, she almost gains an ego we've never seen before. Anyways, now she can like blow [ __ ] up with her mind.

[00:34:16]I don't know. Lane experiences schizophrenic like hallucinations.

[00:34:22]There's debate to this. Some might say that viewing the show through the perspective that she does in fact experience hallucinations detracts from the show's themes and lore. I disagree 100%. Typically, I find it frustrating in fiction when everything is up to interpretation and what is real is ambiguous and stuff. I've gotten better at it now, but in Lane, I think it is integral to all versions of her. To say that it is a purely narrative decision about transcendence would be dishonest to what it's about and the mental illness conveyed in the show, especially if you want to consider the video game that released on the PSX. It's very nonlinear. It's more like Pokémon TV more than anything.

[00:35:09]>> Change the [ __ ] channel on me, >> though. I don't think that this is canon to the story of the anime. Some say that it is a prequel. Lane is very mentally ill in this. She has been experiencing doubles of herself hallucinations since she's been 11 and sees a therapist about this. It's not until the therapist realizes that the friend Lane has been talking about doesn't actually exist that she actually diagnoses her. It's never really specific because realistically it could be a lot of different things. But I do think something of note is that Lane observed by many other people closely resembles RD Lang, a Scottish psychiatrist who is known for his studies of schizophrenia.

[00:35:53]I wouldn't have even made this connection if the game itself didn't bring the guy up. Although there is a fan-made port of this game that you can access now online, I have to warn you that if you have seen the anime, you should know that the game is much, much darker. I think all versions of Lane are important in understanding the franchise as a whole. And even if we will never confidently know if Lane is schizophrenic or not or has some type of dissociative disorder, people who have struggled with these types of things have been able to see themselves and their experiences in the show. And I don't know, I think that is the more important thing here. In all of the fictional works I have mentioned so far, there is one very thin but consistent line that kind of connects them all.

[00:36:47]Dissociation, which I'm using as like a broad term to describe things like depersonalization, derealization, amnesia, those sorts of things. And I mean like duh, like if we're talking about like god, robots, and machines becoming like sentient creatures, like yeah, identity crisis stuff will come up, right? However, from what I have watched that has been listed as fitting into divine machinery, I could not help but feel that it was baked into everything under this label. Maybe not everything. In Xmachina, the main character tries to see if he's a robot.

[00:37:23]In Pantheon, characters consistently try to find out if what they're seeing is real or a computer simulation.

[00:37:29]Evangelion, Crisis of Identity, and Psychotic Breaks. Ghost in the Shell.

[00:37:34]Characters have many conversations on what it is to be. Same with Ergoproxy.

[00:37:40]System redux. You try to find out if your memories are really yours or somebody else's. Mental illness and psychotic breaks like entering into religious psychosis I believe is a major part of divine machinery. And yes, I don't have really any real evidence of this. I can't confirm this is a thing.

[00:38:01]But if we look at artworks like Blessed Bandwidth and the Tik Tok by Celeste that I showed at the beginning. Yeah.

[00:38:07]Yeah. You can definitely get a sense of commentary or like a reflection of some sort of religious psychosis, right? I don't think this is only about gods and machines. I think this is more about finding a new religion. It's easy to find religion in things if you are looking for them. I don't think I would have come to this interpretation if I myself have not in the time period that I have been watching divine machinery have experienced dissociative patterns or the general feeling that I am losing my mind. I'm sure many people can relate to this. Sure, you can look at this aesthetic as just another way of people fetishizing people's real hallucinations and mental illnesses, but I also kind of want to argue that maybe it's not flaunting it, that it's just bringing it up and talking about it in an honest way. And like why not machines, right?

[00:39:00]The concept of animism is usually applied to things like nature where we ascribe plants and animals with spirits.

[00:39:08]this being the universal seed of religion in his argument. However, there's no real reason why animism needs to be exclusive to not man-made things.

[00:39:20]The concept implies that things have a soul, but this doesn't mean that they are sentient. Same reason why people like to name their cars Truth Nuke.

[00:39:39]>> There's a lot of studies on how younger generations in record-breaking numbers are seeking less institutionalized faith and spirituality or choosing just not to be affiliated with a single religion.

[00:39:52]This is undoubtedly some type of shift, right? Some may say it's a bad shift, but you got to admit ice cream sales have gone up. What do you do? Do you want the ice cream economy to crash?

[00:40:06]What are you a [ __ ] psychopath? And I think that's why core is like Catholic core or whatever become a thing. So maybe divine machinery isn't just a retrospection, but also resembling a shift in our modern way of looking at belief as a whole. Going back to that one quote that I brought up earlier, the media equation is a theory that came about by a Stanford study by Clifford Nass and Brian Reeves in trying to understand people's relationship with computer interfaces. They saw that humans had a tendency to project human qualities onto inanimate objects. And on that note, a cool fact I learned while writing this video is that there are a phenomenon of quai and putting them on servers and computers and machines to help them run better in Taiwan to keep bad spirits and hackers away. This isn't just a small office superstition.

[00:41:02]Companies and bureaus will spend thousands on these bags of chips just as a token of good luck.

[00:41:20]Maybe in an essay we can overanalyze things, especially when art is meant to be felt and experienced, not so much dissected into oblivion. I think that you can do both. Of course, there is a place for analysis obviously, but I think it's important to keep in mind that artists for the most part are driven or compelled to make art for initially unexplainable reasons. The explanation coming second, if there ever really is any.

[00:41:54]I don't think anyone can be the true judge on if some divine machinery like art comes from a genuine place or not.

[00:42:03]No matter how many times we performatively yell LAR in regards to the concept of animism specifically, it is maybe just one of those driving forces. However, I will never adequately be able to convince you of the simple existence of a feeling and all of the complexities that it implies.

[00:42:27]This being the very end of the video, I am not concluding that efforts to understand reasons or motivations that simply can't be fully grasped is totally useless.

[00:42:40]But I do think that we should allow artists the freedom to have these complexities and contradictions in themselves and their art because the result can be something really, really, really Cool.

[00:43:10]Heat.