Wifi Shrine first made themself known in the style of all the old Gods: through a voice heard out of the void. A voice that commanded the people: Know me; I am Wifi Shrine, Internet God, the intangible potential of that infinite digital space. Wifi Shrine demanded veneration. Their decree was in the form of a Facebook event, calling “followers” to create an altar, a place in the physical realm where Wifi Shrine could be manifested, and commune with the people.
This was 2015, in a cooperative house bathroom, a site typically associated with our most lowly earthly needs, where people first built a shrine to the Internet God in worship of this space beyond boundaries. The bathroom walls were adorned with print outs of early internet memes, iconography, and the symbols of popular sites and apps. At the center was a computer laden with roses and circled by candles. Participants and devotees of Wifi were invited connect with Them using the computer, that modern altar of stone. As they gazed into the internet with Wifi, opening the void of possibility, searching for what they desired, what they didn't know was that Wifi Shrine was watching them the whole time, too, via the computer's webcam. The video "wifi shrine" provides the first footage of the space, both physical and digital, facilitated by the avatar of Wifi Shrine. Many more encounters were to follow.
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