Ross Kelly - Ghost in the Machine

Ghost in the Machine is a readymade, a found object. It is an old cathode ray tube surveillance monitor that has a distinct image burned into the rear of its screen, a common occurrence in cctv monitors that record an unchanging scene over many years of use. When switched on, the screen displays the ghostly image of a large window and the barely perceptible traces of a room’s interior. The screen-burn is a remnant, a symptom of the system’s normal functions as it recorded and re-recorded over the years, memorizing and re-memorizing the same, unchanging scene in one endless closed loop. Very slowly, electronic information leaked from the system etching a barely recognizable shadow of itself in the physical world. Now that shadow is the only evidence that this image ever existed. Even then, what took place within this room is lost to us as only its primary physical characteristics remain; less an image in its own right then an empty frame for what took place in this space over endless hours, days months and years. The original data had no value outside of its specific function, leading to its systematic erasure. The screen burn is a kind of eulogy to an extinguished species of imagery that had no physical form and no visible source; just an electromagnetic charge on a plastic tape, rooted in the subatomic depths of some invisible unknowable quantum world.

Ross Kelly, Ghost in the Machine, 2015, Screen Burn in Closed Circuit TV Monitor, 8" x 8" x 12" Deep