Potential

Ellen Fabini

Artwork Description:

Potential is composed of battery-powered raspberry pis supporting and powering small LCD screens. On their surfaces are mounted dense graphite drawings done on Yupo paper. Each pi generates a white image on boot, which occasionally flickers. The computer, guts out and exposed, drastically but dutifully underperforms. The screen becomes not just a display surface, but a membrane between spaces. The drawings—an accumulation and residue of external energy exerted—act as filters for the energetic illumination of the system beneath. When the batteries are drained, the screens go dark until their next charge, where outside energy will once again be internalized and stored. External pressures become internalized for the individual and masquerade as desire. These pressures transfer, channel, flow, divert, consume, and contain. The exposed tech and flickering suggests a language of interactivity, implicating the viewer and their expectations of the potential of performance or spectacle. And yet nothing really happens, beyond the filtering, flickering, and failure. The residue remains, teetering on legibility.