MAMMON.exe

Consumption is presented as a panacea to all things. Does your back hurt? Buy a new pillow. Feeling down? Buy some ice cream, or a new streaming service. Low self-confidence, misaligned teeth, broken friendships, broken dreams; all these things can be resolved with a quick swipe of the credit card.

But if consumption is divine, who are the gods that preside over this realm of divinity? MAMMON.exe gives you a chance to commune with the chthonic deities that represent the endless drive for more and better, and to ask them for grace, guidance and gifts in your life. Will you be judged unworthy, or will you leave with a blesssed Proof of Purchase? Be not afraid, for the gods are always listening.

The installation consists of three parts:

- An altar to each god, where supplicants can leave offerings

- A projected image above the altars, which changes to reflect the god currently being communed with

- A website, MAMMON.exe, reached through scanning barcodes on the altars, which will summon the selected god for supplicants to commune with

Visitors are first welcomed into the altars by the seneschal of the gods, who explains each of the gods, their commandments, and their divine rights and responsibilities. The visitor then selects a god and scans the appropriate bar code through the sacred window of consumption, one's phone, and can partake in communion.

While partaking in communion, the selected god is 'summoned' into the sacred device, where the supplicant can chat with it and ask it for boons. The gods are each custom AI instantiated using ChatGPT's API and a series of system prompts that are used to guide the supplicant through the conversation.

Each god is different, and will analyze, critique and provide suggestions about a supplican's consumption habit based on their own divine tenets and ideologies. Gratis, for example, encourages crashing parties for free food and drink, while Luxior is more interested in how many high-end items you've purchased recently.

While chatting with each god, websockets propagate chat events to an Unreal Engine project running through the projector above the altars. The Unreal project is a 3D environment that represents the divine realm of the gods, and as the conversation progresses, the environment changes accordingly.

Ultimately, the god will assign the supplicant a task to complete in order to receive their boons and blessings; the task is unique to each supplicant. Finally, the supplicant will be deemed either worthy or unworthy, and will receive a custom printed thermal receipt that details their conversation with the god, and their final verdict.