not OK computer, 2020
Text written by Eva Arriaga
Dell Optiplex GX110 desktop computer running Windows 2000, 256MB RAM, CRT monitor, keyboard and mouse
not OK Computer is a CRT monitor that recites a poem, only to erase the poem and repeat it again. The computer recollects the memory of abandonment: outdated and forgotten, it lives suspended within this space. By connecting the sentient to technology there is an attempt to acknowledge how, and if, these emotions can exist beyond the human experience. This piece was made during the first lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"It allows us to imagine, I think, a world where the material around us— the denim of your jeans, the glass of your watch crystal, the wood of your chair set—has, as the object of its desire, perhaps, the desire to be some other object. . . . A secret life of things that is irreducible to the object forms with which we have constructed and constricted our world. And it is the recognition of that life, I think, that holds some premise for transforming life as we know it."
- Bill Brown, Objects, Others and Us (The Refabrication of Things)