In his interdisciplinary practice Muhannad Shono concerns himself with the mechanization of ritual forms of life and practices in the wake of  digitalization, so investigating the significance of the ritual and its emotional determination. What defines the contemporary forms of ritual acts?
In the Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Shono will be showing the first phase of his ongoing research project ala: ritual machine in the form of motor-driven objects. In this context, his artistic debate is directed at the ceremonial aspect of the ritualized object – as a new form of the ritual. Inasmuch as we participate in the mechanized ritual, accepting the mechanical object, we enter into a shared field of action that is predetermined as part of a ceremony, which synchronizes us. In the rite of our common actions, which the ritualized object fulfils for us, we are joined by an emotional experience. The ceremony follows a programme of fixed arrangements, forming regular patterns, the repetitive rhythm of which is transferred. It delineates a field in which we interact in fixed ways, our ritual acts being dependent on one another, informing each other reciprocally, without us determining our own behaviour.

The research project is taking place in cooperation with Prof. Dr. Manfred Hild from  the Neurorobotics Research Laboratory of Beuth Technical College (Hochschule für Technik) in Berlin.