Flowers of the Flesh 2022

Publication, writing, photography

Mudras are symbolic ritual gestures used in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism usually performed with the hands and fingers. Mudras are believed to have a multitude of purposes ranging from enhancing the strength of meditative practices, healing bodily ailments, invoking deities and representing certain deities themselves. They are their own language that have specific meanings in ritual, dance and statuary, mediating between a worshiper and a deity.

With the pairing of images of me performing mudras with those of me enacting keyboard shortcuts, I meditate on the relationship between the user and machine. The devotee and the deity. To use a keyboard shortcut requires me to arrange my fingers into different shapes which trigger very specific meanings to the machine and/or software. I engage in this repeatedly like a ritual, hitting the same key strokes, making the same gestures and shapes in order to invoke specific actions. What are the invisible forces on the other side of a machine? Is the keyboard shortcut a digital mudra? If so, to whom are we speaking (worshipping)?

Bradley Sinanan

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