Built from the face of an early 1950s Zenith television set, this sculpture begins with an object originally designed to receive and display images. The cathode-ray screen once served as a window for narrative—broadcast signals translated into recognizable forms, characters, and stories. In this reconfiguration, that function is set aside.

Rather than reconstructing a historical image or referencing period content, the work turns to what was typically dismissed: the absence of signal.
On analog televisions, moments between channels produced fields of static—visual noise without narrative. Briefly, as the set powered down, that noise would collapse into a single horizontal line, then contract to a point before disappearing altogether. This transitional state—no longer an image, but not yet a blank screen—forms the basis of the composition.

The intervention is minimal. A single horizontal line emerges across the center of the circular screen, created through carefully calibrated light and refraction. The surrounding field remains softly illuminated, allowing the line to register as both event and structure. Achieving this balance required precise control of intensity and diffusion so that the line holds its clarity without overwhelming the object’s original form.

The circular geometry of the television face, reinforced by its symmetrical housing and flanking dials, remains intact and visually dominant. The added element does not compete with this structure but instead activates it, introducing a quiet tension between the object’s historical function and its current state.


Seen within the context of mid-century technology, the piece recalls the material language of early broadcast media while shifting its emphasis from representation to perception. In place of transmitted content, the work presents a distilled visual condition—light reduced to line—aligning the object more closely with minimalist and perceptual traditions than with its origins in narrative display.