ALTAR 1 – ONX Seeds

“Altar 1” converts a commercial vending machine into a contemporary reliquary. A familiar system is repurposed to distribute offerings that sit between object and symbol, product and relic. Each selection produces a contained experience, activating a sensory or perceptual register and creating a subtle shift in awareness. The work draws from religious structures based on access, repetition, and submission, translated into a contemporary technological form. Interaction is simple and immediate, yet its meaning remains unstable. The same gesture can produce comfort, unease, or disorientation. The installation establishes a closed system in which use generates meaning. What is received is not neutral. The act itself begins to carry weight. Positioned between the everyday and the sacred, the work frames a space where consumption, ritual, and belief become difficult to separate.