Vaticano.org: The First Internet Coup

The hacker/artist group 0100101110101101.org hacked the Vatican main website back in 1998. An interesting example of how new media is used and misused in this context. Especially the reaction time from the religious organization, which had even a hard time figuring out the hacking attempt.

The website: http://0100101110101101.org/home/vaticano.org/spoof/index.html
More info at: http://0100101110101101.org/home/vaticano.org/story.html




The night of the 10th December 1998 begins the action that will go down in history as The First Internet Coup. Over 24 hours, a commando takes posses of the official online organ of information of the Vatican State, or the Holy See. The commando buys the domain name vaticano.org pointing it to a Canadian server, where has already been created a huge website esthetically identical to the official one (www.vatican.va).
An editorial network works 24-7 with precise instructions: copy as many texts as possible from the official website, modify them slightly and publish them in the fake one.
Like the Pope, 0100101110101101.ORG has decided to open the Holy Doors of the Net to pilgrims from the whole world: from the moment in which Vaticano.org is opened, a huge stream of visitors pours into the fake website. Over one year the spoof website reaches more than 4 million hits: a one-year radical performance and the Net will never be the same.
Read more!

Charming Burqa

An innovative example to use technology in a religious context as a form of resistance- questioning the dogmatic tradition - by German designer Markus Kison. Check out the other projects too, since they are dealing with the same issues.

The CharmingBurka deals with Freud's idea that all clothes can be positioned between appeal and shame. The Burka was chosen, because it is often perceived in the west as a symbol of repression. A digital layer was added so that women can decide for themselves where they want to position themselves virtually. The Burka sends an image, chosen by the wearer, via Bluetooth technology.


I can remember the urban legend that during the last days of the Ottoman empire, when Muslim people allegedly drunk alcohol on trains - because the train is moving, and in the same time has a roof, so Allah can't peer into it.
Defining technology as a main product of a secular, enlightened, modern society means that we can use it to overcome rules which oppress ones freedom of expression - this could have been the summary of this works message.
Is the usage of technology makes us more secular, or the notion of using it in order to obtain a certain social environment?
Read more!

Letters form Heaven

An except taken from the website The Post-Rapture Post:

"Just write your letter and it will be hand-delivered immediately following the exodus of the pure from the Earth. But you must be thinking to yourself, "How can the letters be delivered after the Rapture?" The answer is simple. The creators of this site are Atheists. That's right, we don't believe in God. How else would we be able to deliver your correspondence after the Rapture?"

Regarding of the nature of this civic initiative, I recommend to check out the FAQ they provide. First might be a joke to laugh on, but on the second, it seems rather to be a satirical attempt to shake people, and raise some money on real charity - which is an interesting shift from being a mocker to being a critique of a social interaction.
Another satirical attempt by atheist, misused by believers, but still interesting example of satire in action.
Read more!

Computer games and religion - part 1 - Atheist games

Computer games is a special media by many sense: first of all, due to the relative freshness of the media, it is much more open mouthed then many other genre, hence we can find much more radical statements in these works then many we encounter today. The second is, that the performative act of (playing) the games give infinite opportunity to both missionary work by religious groups and the opposite, satirical usage by secular minds.


Unlike cinema, which is a rather passive media, and the full content of the artistic product unveils for the audience, - who still have the freedom to interpret or misinterpret it as she/he likes - computer games need you active participation to explore the full message, capacity of the media, which, we might see later a crucial point for understanding satire in these games.

Direct, satirical anti-religious content is quite rare, yet many of these games circulate in the blog sphere, like the fighting game Bible Fight (Macromedia flash required) in which we can compete for example Noah with the Holy Mar or with Satan in single fight, each of them with unique special attacks and moves. Ofcourse the hidden character is god, but you can only play him after you have defeated all the other biblical celebrities. I have to admit, that this game should be set in parallel to the other famous fighting game portraying past dictators and present state rulers in a satirical way.


Faith Fighter and Operation Pedopriest by the Italian multimedia art group Molleindustria are another two examples of satirical portrayal of church/belief - much the same way and with the same aesthetics of for example as South Park does. Even the notion that religious "powers" can compete against each other is a highly atheist, pragmatist idea, yet the satiric approach needs no further explanation in this case. Molleindustria is very well know for their radical, political games in the media/blog culture, and these works fully expose the games ability to speak about a moral/belief issue by involving the "viewer" in this case the player. In Faith Fighter, for example, anything we do with the mighty prophets during the game, destroys buildings and cars in enormous quantity in the background, hence anything we do is harmful to humanity one way or another. In case of Operation Pedopriest there is no goal for the game, other then convince the media and police constantly to not report/investigate in sexual crimes which is committed by unattended priests - an circular loop, which has no solution.

As artist has the freedom to hide the context into the processes of accessing the media, rather then to insert into the direct text of it, games seems to be an ideal tool of critique of dogmatic thinking. Lets keep on an eye on it, as the media becomes widespread, it might be an excellent tool of not aimed only amusement but political discussion.
Read more!

Invisible pink unicorn - an agnostic anti religion

Invisible pink unicorn: (IPU) is the goddess of a satiric parody religion aimed at theistic beliefs, which takes the form of a unicorn that is paradoxically both invisible and pink. These attributes serve to satirize the apparent contradictions in properties which some attribute to a theistic God, specifically omniscience, omnipotence and omni benevolence. Read more!

Why Satire?

Why satire? - why does people employ satire when dealing issues like religion? Why not to stand up and say out loud what we think about the subject? Why rather joke on it in a satirical way?
Can't a secular just step up and make a proclamation to all religious bodies to stop functioning in the name of reason and enlightenment? Sounds silly isn't it?
It is hard to define what is secularism defense mechanism against religion, other then the liberal idea, that religious belief should be only a personal concern in all level of biopolitics, not a public one. Still, in the case of a truce between religions and secular state the two has to say something about each other. And the seculars, atheist, non-believers seems to do this on a rather indirect, satirical way. Why?


Being satirical means that you are in a higher position then the one who is the subject of satire - in any terms. Higher in some term, but much more cautious on the other, as satire in never a direct statement: "stealthy critique" - Mark Twains definition on the genre. People employ satire if they have something to tell, but can't to it in a direct way, (just think in the rich heritage of political satire of the last few centuries), or when the direct way is too risk to take, mainly because of the possible retribution of the ones portrayed.
In the case of religious satire, the later might be not as relevant in a secular state, which has its own legal system to protect its citizens and the freedom of expression, so the previous one should be more relevant in this case.

Being critical - not against something, but rather give a critique on it in order to improve is something we can clearly associate with modern society, as being not against something, but rather analyze and understand it a highly secular position, in the really basic sense of the word secular. Being critical and being completely against something could be side by side each other, and this those not have to involve being satirical. Satire is employed in the case when being critical against something is not among the tools of what is opposed by the producers of the satire. In this case, the one who makes the satire also takes the superior position in moral terms by leaving multiple choices, by literally being secular... . Being satirical is a way to remain critical all the time, and do not go into the same discourse as the ones, who, by any notion, does not employ criticism.

To understand what I mean by being critical, satirical and not get involved into direct, legal action, (which is the responsibility of the secular state, not the particular individual) I would like to compare two very important work made in the last few weeks about the Church of the Scientology and its harsh opponent, the hacker group Anonymous.

Anonymous, the 'hacker group' have appeared just recently in public by launching a large internet campaign against the Church of Scientology in all possible platforms from live protest to the hacking the Churches databases and leaking important classified materials to the web or to make the web representation of the Scientology unavailable.
In this youtube video, Anonymous made a quite direct statement against the group, in a style which I would not describe to being critical, but rather offensive towards a certain organization.



Altrough this first message provoked a landslide of other messages, legal or illegal moves form both sides, what interests me, is rather a comment given by the pastafarian Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM), a secular mock religion intended to make satirical spoofs on non-secular parties.

In their response to Anonymous, (whose point on view on Scientology are share much in common with the FSM) - the FSM copies the very same aesthetics as the previous movie piece, in terms of sound, visuals and basic tone, even most parts of the text is similar, but there is a huge difference between the two. Satire.



FSM even discredits the enemies of a non-secular organization, for being non-secular/and or postsecular- and employing the same level of satire as the FSM successfully employs against any other group they are making joke of.
Read more!

Reinterpreting the Book

The Phonebook is a novel with a rather narrow plot but with many protagonist, said Arthur c. Danto about the post structural rethinking of our visual and communication language. In this post, I tried to gather all the bible modifications I found so far.



The largest project I found was the Lolcat Bible Translation Project, an entire, comprehensive modification, spoof of the original text of the bible to some sort of satirical, contemporary language full with deprivations, and satirical, obscure references against the original context and usage.


By replacing the deity with the really obscure idea of LOLcat (Laughing Out Loudly cats - which anything funny about, with cats, an aesthetic paradigm emerging lately) the creators are trying to to point out any possible inconsistence in the original text, making its original intents as inconclusive as possible.
But lest stop for the sake of this LOLcat paradigm for a little: being funny has a completely different meaning in the context of the blogger sphere in this case. Being funny is being satirical, and usually is has nothing to do with the original context of the image and/or text material. The same way as Susan Sontag defined camp, this funniness could be announced as a new form of aesthetic production, as it has the same attitude towards bad, or "unimportant", "funny" as the cultural practicer's of camp did to their subjects.





A related project is Know Your Bible, which I found at the satirical, atheist website Russel's Teapot, which is a close reading and recontextualizing of the original text. The verses chosen are interpreted from a anti-religious point of view, ambiguities, inconsistencies and revolting elements of the bible (propagating domestic violence, rape, murder, as an example) . An image is taken for every entry as an illustration, and these images give a large potential in them - they are conjuring up images familiar from the global new networks and image production and turning this against the text and subtext of the bible. The images are already familiar, all we have just to do is to associate them with the bible and the believers, or at least thats what the collection suggest.
Russell's Teapot website hence turns to be one of the most aggressive and successful atheist, anti-religious website. I have to also admit, this site has a clear political orientation, and not employ an almost neutral notion of satire, like the others, rather use the images for political reasons.

And again, the Brick Testament, a satirical compendium of Bible events made from LEGO parts - the creator of this project is clearly reinterpreting the bible in order to distance the viewers as far away from the spiritual interpretations of the text as possible. In my previous post, I described it, how he does this, here I would like to point out a stark example, the Two fates of Judas. Not yet a Borgesian tale, but almost.




An interesting, less satirical, but more artistic reinterpretation of the Bible comes from the artist, Neva Elliott, who, in the project titled The Elliott Condensed Bible rearranged the original words of the bible into some strange order based on the verbs common in this book. Do, Do Not, Shall, Shall not phrases taken from their original context are in some way making a satirical statement, but at least a atheist, non believer one: the bible is only a book, not a holy entity and can be reinterpreted as any other literature.

Read more!

The Church of Google - Googlism

From the website of The Church of the Google:

"We at the Church of Google believe the search engine Google is the closest humankind has ever come to directly experiencing an actual God (as typically defined). We believe there is much more evidence in favor of Google's divinity than there is for the divinity of other more traditional gods.

We reject supernatural gods on the notion they are not scientifically provable. Thus, Googlists believe Google should rightfully be given the title of "God", as She exhibits a great many of the characteristics traditionally associated with such Deities in a scientifically provable manner."


A clear example of a satiric mock religion, not to aggressive, but still really elitist, very well made site - based on a simple agnostic term taken form a highly atheist point of view. What makes it a really good civil initiative is that the creators of the site retains the strict, minimalistic functionality of the original Google, giving almost scientific explanations on every possible issue you might come up, browsing the pages.
I might say the creators took their role as seriously as possible - you could almost believe in Her, even despite we all very well know Google is just a search engine run by a private company. The incredible number of hatemail they receive could be due the fact they successfully pointed out something very important regarding how religious belief is perceived even by serious believers.

Read more!

Is there an Artificial God? - by Douglas Adams

A fine speech given by one of the most notable writers of our time in his usual, witty, satirical style. An atheist peek into the notion why do we created gods for, and if the eggs was before the hen...

the text: Is there an Artificial God? Read more!

Brick Testamant - Bible from LEGO parts

Brick Testament is an illustrated bible entirely made out of LEGO bricks and figures, published in the form of a website and numerous books, translated to many languages.
On the first hindsight, there is nothing special about the Brick Testament other the unusual material chosen for illustration. Skillful, short stories with superb sets and familiar characters form our childhood memories. The viewer first might be overwhelmed by the talent of the creator, being able to construct almost any scene from the book using only traditional bricks from the LEGO range, not using any additional material to picture biblical events.
First, you might thought this is a product of some overzealous people we would like to make their favorite reading more enjoyable to publics who have a fascination with LEGO or toys in general, but you will soon find out, that Brick Testament is one of the most skeptical and satirical site on the internet by religious means.
An atheist guide to Brick Testament:

(the holy trinity!)



Building enormous constructs by small scale, but still familiar modules have ever been a fascinating sight for modern people. Maybe the skyscrapers, aircraft carriers, human-scale sets of these small, and limited--in-form bricks might suggest that things are understandable by us, and not as complex as they seem to be in the reality.
Brick Testament could be another fine illustrated bible, especially popular with children who are already familiar with the popular Belgian toy, but lets take a closer look on the fine illustration of this wonderful bible: there is a more or less codified language of illustrated bibles worldwide: middle east setting, breaded man and modestly dressed woman roaming around in a desert like environment with camels and clay buildings in the background. Even the most accurate illustrated bible we print nowadays are close reading of the original text, but with a certain sense of pictorial neutrality and a heavy influence of late Victorian morals. Most illustrated bibles are seems to be have the same sort of illustrations as a love story of a fairy tale: with the total absence of nudity, obscenity or any visual portrayal of brutal, violent acts.
The most gruesome image we might see in an illustrated bible, either from the 17th century or a contemporary one would be the extremely theatrical suffering of Jesus, or people being drowned during the Great Flood.




Gustav Doré, a French artist from the 19th century, one of the most famous illustrator of the bible, whose illustration inspired many others, portrayed many dreadful scenes of the holy bible, but with the passion of romantic art from that art period, not with the gruesome realism, what we can encounter from press photos nowadays. Bloodless black and white engravings, passionate movements, excellent composition, and almost a complete inventory of sacral images form the past centuries, that’s what Doré’s classic is, being a constant source of inspiration and point of reference to clergy and believers, sacral artist all over the world.
We might refer Doré’s work as an adequate illustration of the biblical events, which well met the representative requirements of the churches and the morals of the bourgeois society by that time, and ever since.
Unlike the Brick Testament, which is as much far away from the traditional ways of illustrating the bible as possible. Since most artist, who illustrate the bible, want to open up its content to an audience who finds the book much easier to understand with images, the Brick Testament seems to do the same, but only at first look.


Yes, Reverend Brendan Powell Smith, is visualizing the bible with LEGO bricks, but not for making it an adorable piece or reading for us, but rather to discover how earthy, pragmatic, inconsistent, brutal and cruel this piece of reading is.
Unlike a religious reader, the Reverend is in fact trying to make his Brick testament as profane as possible. Since he is following the biblical text closely, he can’t ad to much textual comments for the actual pictures. (Although sometimes he does, check out them if you have time, they are hilarious/they have slightly different color then the written text of the bible.)
Hence he is working with two methods to be as critical and satirical about the bible material as possible: by choosing of the images and the sheer portrayal of them. Rape, killing, mutilation, religious intolerance, serious inconsistencies in the text, horrible, senseless acts of violence are especially likely to be featured in Brick testament.
Alex, the main hero of the movie Clockwork Orange (1971, D: Stanely Kubrick) states he likes to read the bible in the prison because of the sex and violence he finds in it. The same of going on in Brick Testament – the artist consequently finds out all the scenes from the book which seems to be un-acceptable, or too-much for out moral standards. Genocide, mass raping, and some form of fascism are side by side with really poignant portrayals of biblical events.
Since only a portion – still it is a large portion - of the actual bible is represented, Brick testament is not focusing on the traditional events we all know from the bible, but rather on those ones, which might change our reading of this book.

(the massacre of those we subverted to a false prophet)


An atheist bible, we might say, despite the number of religious communities featuring Brick Testament on their website. Altorugh God is present in the pictures, and yes, he is immortal and omnipotent, the graphical qualities of the pictures, the choice of the events, and especially the remarks, which the actors are giving on the pictures, and which are not the part of the biblical text are highly satirical about the religious sub context of the original book.

(Cain is being made...)

The titles for each chapter of illustrations is excellent, like"When to stone your entire family?"
It is even worth to browse trough the entire material for those who already very well aware of the nature of this book for the fantastic pictoral solutions of this special technical feat, the conservative (I mean the artist is never ever using any 3rd party material) usage LEGO and
the fantastic comments by the author in some of the pictures (in gray)!

A must see for any secular!

Read more!

Popes hit by Meteors

It all started with Maurizio Cattelan and his statue Pope John Paul II hit by a meteorite last year, titled the "The Ninth Hour", referring to the last sentences of Jesus Christ "My God!, My God!, Why hast Thou forsaken Me? - right before passing away.

Then came the flood of images, statues of Popes hit by meteorites:



Of course, Benedict could not evade the large stone falling form the sky too, trough his image is a simple Photoshop modification by an Anonymous artist.





So the Patriarchs of the Ortodox Christian Church, since Ciprian Muresan, a Romanian artist made the eastern version of the very same image, entitled 'The End of the Five-Year Plan'.



Then Elliott Arkin, a clay figure maker/artist from the States, did some hilarious alternate versions of Catellan's original, like "Maurizio Cattelan being hit by three million dollars", referring to the top price received for the highly contraversional original sculpture, or the "Underdog lifting a meteor off the Pope" also reffering events which took place against Catellan's original by two polish MP in a Poland exhibition.




images from Artnet.

Read more!

Infidel strategies

In the Kevin Smith movie Clerks II (2006) the main entrepreneurs are working in a fast food empire chain restaurant which is called Mooby the Calf. At the first glance is seems to be completely indifferent if what company they are working for apart from the fact that is resembles McDonald’s heavily, and no-one ever, even explicitly says a single line about the possible origins of the companies name. Neither do they in another of the directors movie the Dogma (1999) in which the company was first portrayed, also as a successful fast food chain restaurant.

The audience has to put together the picture themselves on this strange element of the movie: they have to figure out, mostly form Dogma, that Mooby in fact is not an average cow or calf, and her identity in not as a simple calf, but a golden one, hence she is the biblical golden calf the idol which was worshiped by the tribes of Israel during the events known as "Chet ha'Egel" (חטא העגל) or "The Sin of the Calf". It is first mentioned in Exodus 32:4 (Taha 20:83 in the Quran).



On 9/11 2001, right after the second plane hit the twin towers, I remember people all over the world becoming horrified by realizing that an organized attack if happening against New York and maybe Washington, an immediately started to figure out where the supposed other planes (whose number in the resulting communication chaos were 0 to 12, dependent on all different resources) shall strike down. Apart from the convenient Empire State Building, Capitol Hill, White House (which is just to small to be hit) one of the possible targets in people mind become the Statue of Liberty close to the twin towers.
With the Twin Towers, the places of ‘commerce and liberal world economy’ down, should “they” attack the remaining symbols of the Big Apple? Empire State Building is indeed a large building, but never held the same status as the Towers, being some kind of cordial center, the embodiment of western liberal economy, it rather belonged to a prewar, old colonialist era. Empire State Building was ever associated with King Kong, the ‘natural’ beast who would ‘use’ the building than topple it down. We must not have to forget that WTC was target of attacks even before 9/11, amongst which the most notable was the 1993 bombing of Tower 1. And never the less, Twin towers were taller than the Empire…

Why would anyone hit a statue, an idol of United States with a plane? There was some wicked symbolism in the act of hitting the WTC too, as those radicals was looking up to those buildings as “Towers of Satan”, but the sheer magnitude of destruction and the number of lives taken seemed to make the twin towers a more appealing target for the terrorists. Still, when we suspected a least half dozen more “plane-bomb” coming, some of our first thought was that the Liberty Statue could be hit.Never ever any of the characters in the movie say it openly, apart form Loki when he states that god will be pleased with his work at Moody’s because those people were committing idolatry. Leaving one of the most gruesome scene of the movie unresolved morally. There is a certain element of protest in the notion of leaving this fact in the shadows, allowing the audience to discover them later on, yet, we does not have to forget, that Dogma was attacked on every possible ground by Christian religious organizations as being a blasphemous movie. None the less, we might say that Dogma is one of the most notable and intellectual atheist parody on belief and organized religion up until now.

It seems not to be hard to state that Dogma is an essential secular movie, conveying the feelings and thoughts of young generation of East Coast (and any other we likes the movie) intellectuals towards the religious zeal they encounter in their daily life in the states and elsewhere.
Kevin Smith, the director, who later received at least serious death threats among the 300,000 hate mail he received because of this movie, said: ‘You gotta find the line, and then cross it.’
A very few movie caused such a controversy as this one, a satirical comedy on the Christian belief, and the movie become a much acclaimed portray of contemporary religion, referred by many as a perfect movie on the dogmatic, nonsecular practices of United States religious fundamentalism.
Why a comedy? Is being satirical seems to be the ultimate way to oppose non-secular religious fundamentalism? The obvious success of Dogma as an ironic gesture seems to strengthen this notion, yet, in another interview Smith states: Ever since 9/11, I have been thinking about a sequel of sorts. I mean, the worst terrorist attack on American soil was religiously bent. In the wake of said attack, the leader of the "Free World" outed himself as pretty damned Christian.(…)
This quote underlines the position of the filmmaker, so do his fans, including myself, a position which considers “being satirical” as the most adequate way of speaking on issues of organized religion. Could the notion of “being satirical” stems from some kind of late modernist attitude, which tries to understand religious belief in a strictly secular context, and try to not include it in a face to face debate ? By admitting to argue on a non obscured , non-satirical level, we might revoke our position, our very notion of secular state?

Being satirical is clearly an intellectual stance, or even an intellectual weapon. Most of the controversial artworks of the past years, which produced a large amount of furor among extremist fundamental religious groups were meant to be satirical: let’s take the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons as an example.

Why is there a notion of not to say something open in being satirical, as do Kevin Smith with Mooby in his understanding satire is an intellectual task.
What is the difference of being satirical and being straight up to?
Swift, Dickens, Dafoe, Huxley, Orwell, Aristophanes,

How to lose being satirical? Non-satirical responses to satirical acts.


On a possible sequel he says in the same interview full text: http://www.viewaskew.com/theboard/viewtopic.php?t=41221
Scary thing is this: the film would have to touch on Islam. And unlike the Catholic League, when those cats don't like what you do, they issue a death warrant on yer ass (see Rushdie). And now that I've got a family, I'm not as free to stir the shit-pot as I was when I was single, back when I made "Dogma". I mean, now I've gotta think about more than my own safety and well-being.

Secular strategy seems to stop at a certain point, as we might expect.

Read more!