In his installation Be Angry But Don’t Stop Breathing (2003), Mark ­Titchner situates the gallery space between the experimental forum of the laboratory and the devotional space of the cathedral. Through sculptural and text-based works, he conflates the philosophies of cult figures whose theories find their origins outside acknowledged science.

The central component of the installation is a laboriously hand-carved apparatus. Visitors are invited to shout into one of the six arms protruding from its hexa­gonal base and watch as their collective screams, with the help of electronic amplification, manifest themselves as vibrations in an adjacent tray of liquid. This totemistic sculpture parodies a number of dissonant ideas, which rely on the viewer for activation. Titchner links disparate elements of the installation through the repetition of the hexagon, the graphic symbol for benzene, which is a key solvent used in organic chemistry. This motif is further disseminated through the recurrence of the number six. The six vertical, freestanding banners surrounding the sculpture echo in scale and form the religious standards common to churches and cathedrals.

Contrasting with the roughly hewn surface of the sculpture and acting as a sort of altarpiece for the space, a huge digitally printed banner confidently asserts Be Angry But Don’t Stop Breathing. Its typeface, reminiscent of early computer graphics, is offset by a digitally generated starburst, and the work takes on the appearance of a slick graphic poster with analogies in mainstream advertising. The phrase is taken from the poster for W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism, a controversial film of 1971 loosely based on the life and work of Wilhelm Reich.

Found text often appears in Titchner’s practice, since he describes his art as ­ “a dialogue about how you receive thought and ideas.” His works investigate communication and perception. Messages gleaned from song lyrics, corporate creeds, philosophical treatises, and political manifestos are physically described and digitally scripted into the works, although devoid of context. A shared aesthetic persists without the conceptual or spiritual dimension that was fundamental to its origination. Titchner examines this cultural filtering process that results in the survival and popularization of certain elements over and above others.

Reviews trying to discuss Titchner’s work often end up speaking generally about belief systems, including not only religion itself, but also the sciences, philosophy, and others. Of course, this is valid, but the discussion has to go beyond this obvious observation in order to lead us to the core of what his work is about. The question is, why have the different institutions mentioned above—and let me include product fetishism among these as well—become such strong models that they can be arbitrarily combined, replacing or complementing the ancient ruling concept of monotheism in our western societies? One can say that the current, all-over-the-place discussion about the “return of religion” begins with an inexplicit assumption already. Religion doesn’t have to return, for it has never left and can never leave. If we strip the concept of religion down to its basic function, it creates a system like an umbrella under which humankind can take shelter; it gives all human actions and thoughts a meaning and puts everything into perspective. Every human being needs this power outside himself to exist; it is a necessary precondition for human consciousness.

By bringing together diverse cultural and spiritual icons from his personal memory and the collective memory, Titchner both follows the threads of how these systems are constructed and how they function—actively involving visitors in his installations—and provides a platform upon which the viewer can exemplarily ­experience in person how attempts to fill the innate emptiness must fail in confrontation with his works.

One of the newer elements in Titchner’s work practice can be observed in Ergo Ergot (2006), which was shown in his presentation for his Turner Prize nomination. A screen displays a headache-inducing flicker of Rorschach ink blots interspersed with dates over the last seven years in which, according to the human rights group Liberty, the British government passed legislation that threatens civil liberties. The aggravating humming noise that fills the room is supposed to lure one’s brain into a trance-like state. It seems like Titchner has set out to incorporate more concrete messages into his works.