Virtual Mass ─ Antoine Martin

An artist’s book examining the digital mediation of liturgy through screenshots gathered from unsecured surveillance cameras around the world.

Virtual Mass is an artist’s book by Swiss-based artist Antoine Martin. Over the course of more than two years, Martin researched insecam.com, a website that streams real-time footage from poorly secured surveillance cameras installed across the world. Among the many images he encountered, he focused in particular on the phenomenon of the “virtual mass,” which expanded rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

At a moment when online gatherings and the digitisation of information have become increasingly commonplace, the book points both to the ubiquity of remote surveillance and to the role of new technologies within liturgical space. Presented in a binding that echoes the form of a missal, the collected screenshots ultimately raise a fundamental question: can divine presence itself be digitised?

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Title: Virtual Mass
Artist: Antoine Martin
Publisher: RVB Books, 2023
Format: Hardcover, leather-bound, gold hotfoil, gilt-edged
Size: 115 × 150 mm
Pages: 224, with 97 images
Language: French / English
Edition: First edition
ISBN: 978-2-492175-28-2