Digital Culture & AudioVisual Challenges

This paper investigates what happens when digital environments cease to function primarily as simulations of reality and are instead designed as ritual spaces for collective participation. Drawing on anthropological theories of ritual, posthuman perspectives, and debates on disenchantment and re-enchantment in technological modernity, the paper argues that digital media can operate as symbolic infrastructures capable of hosting shared ritual practices rather than merely representational experiences. Through a practice-based research approach, the study positions design as a method of inquiry and examines how collective presence, liminality, and distributed agency can be reconfigured within contemporary digital environments. The paper presents Cchiù as a speculative digital ritual system that translates theoretical insights from ritual studies, Mediterranean folklore, and techno-spiritual discourse into a concrete audiovisual and interactive architecture. Conceived as an open-ended prototype rather than a finalized work, Cchiù functions as a research framework for exploring emerging forms of techno-rituality and non-confessional techno-spiritual experience. By foregrounding collective participation over individual expression, the project invites a critical rethinking of ritual practices in digital culture, suggesting that ritual is not a residual form of the past but a cultural practice in transformation, capable of reorganizing presence, meaning, and collectivity within technological environments.