INTERCULTURALITY

The evolution driven by artificial intelligence and digital simulation technologies has revolutionised how human beings conceive, create, and engage with artistic and spiritual experiences. This paper investigates an emerging paradox within this transformation.Drawing on African cosmologies, comparative religious aesthetics, and posthumanist theory, the study considers the extent to which the digital can simulate the ontological and affective aspects of sacred experience, rather than merely imitating its appearances. Through a philosophical and cultural exploration, the article calls into question the disembodied nature of code-based creativity by comparing it to the embodied practices of ritual, specifically in indigenous African cultures, where clay, spirit, physical materials, and the artist's body come together as forces of transformation. Prone propositions such as presence, aura, and the divine's intentionality are examined alongside contemporary manifestations such as AI-generated iconography, virtual altars, and algorithmic ritualism. Some religious bodies contend that, even though technology can emulate the representation of the sacred, it is often bereft of the ontological and metaphysical reciprocity that animates sacred encounters in ancestral traditions. By placing indigenous material epistemologies and the spiritual agency of material at the front and centre of its analysis, this article pushes back on universalist digital transcendence narratives. It stakes an ethical claim for a more situated, multigrounded ethic of techno-spiritual creativity.

Open Full Text (PDF)