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Plug & Pray

16/01/2004
Furtherfield

In the guise of a business corporation, Holy Soft sell us the Internet user, packaged faiths in Plug & Pray, an imaginative play on “choose your religion, choose your politics”. The web site itself is well designed, presented with an accurate and meticulous verve. If you were to take the time to observe official software-selling sites on the Internet you’d notice the blanketing of dubious commercial presentations with sober identities that Plug & Pray have consciously mimicked. It seems authentic at first glance, (almost) believable.

If you are tempted by the offers that Holy Soft have kindly put together for you the net consumer, there are various kits available so you can acquire a faith of your choice such as Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam and Buddhism. You may choose from a selection of popular standard and deluxe packages for the contemporary, postmodern religious chameleon packaged CD-ROMs. The Plug & Pray site also suggests that if you have recently been through the experience of a new Taliban invasion or you think that your life as a good Christian is jeopardized, you can switch faiths accordingly.

In their press release it says “The Plug & Pray” concept borrows its name and reinterprets the famous idea behind ‘plug and play’ technology. PnP is now a synonym for easy hardware installation and hassle-free software set up that allows you to immediately start using a new HW device or SW application. “Play” becomes “Pray” – your conversion is instantaneous, smooth and seamless.

This cultural subversion of net-based commerce by Internet art activists is one of a number of such conceptual adventures explored and enjoyed by many of us over the years. Alexei Shulgin’s FuckU-FuckMe created in 1999 is a suitable reference for a critical response and an imaginative approach to selling IT packages. It succeeds in breaking down the definition, or illusion of what is presumed authentic. In the FAQ section of the site it says “FuckU-FuckMe is the most powerful, pleasurable, inexpensive, and only dual-party Internet remote intercourse tool on the market today.” Like Plug & Pray it offers a parodic technological solution for our personal needs with a virtual product.
OK, let’s take another step back, three years in time to 1996. Heath Bunting set up a project called Skint – The Internet Beggar. And it’s still accessible as a single, simple web form. On it, the Internet Beggar persona asks for online donations from visiting net surfers. At the top of the page is a statement from the beggar “lurking in piss and puke stinking alleys of the info supa high way squatting almost invisibly in piles of corporate data trash the internet beggar only concerned with his own addictions tries to blag a dollar off disgusted passers-by”.

Unlike Heath Bunting who actually put the online payments into his bank account. Holy Soft’s web site offers an order form page, which asks the customer to buy one of the member’s t-shirts instead. With Heath’s piece the product salves your debilitated conscience. By buying a Plug & Pray t-shirt one is buying into the capitalist game that is being prayed.

Whenever this type of ironic activist net-play on moral values is mixed with the actual possibility of transaction, it can declare tensions. Bringing to the fore questions such as – what is fraud? And who says what is really fraud? Theoretically, Holy Soft could be challenged by law – for actively selling false (immaterial) products under the International Trade Descriptions Act, for selling poly-mythologies, packaged religions. One begins to mentally clock the many other spoofs that have plagued us in our ever confusing “Hyper-real” world. It throws in our face the realization that our consciousnesses are a pliable currency, and are up for grabs.

FuckU-FuckMe (Alexei Shulgin).
Skint – The Internet Beggar – (Heath Bunting)