Technology for a ghost

2024

The object is reminiscent of a piece of furniture with bizarre, inaccessible, and hybrid forms, partially imitating period cabinets that were used to disguise radios and televisions in domestic environments during the early decades of their widespread adoption. Inside the strange sculpture is a diorama of a room, visible only through three security cameras connected to three office screens, where a ghostly presence appears and disappears continuously. The effect is achieved through an optical illusion called Pepper’s Ghost, a play of lights, rooms, and tilted glass devised in 1862 by the English scientist John Henry Pepper, still in use today in theatres and amusement parks. The sculpture, which reveals itself to be a machine for images, broadcasts live, through closed-circuit cameras, a film without beginning or end.

Wood, iron, medium density fiberboard, acrylic glass, iron wires, varnish, acetate sheets, LED lamps, rotating device, three CCTV cameras, Three DVRs, three 17” monitors, variable dimensions