Ar2ViewBannerBadani

Power Potential

Pat Badani with Desiree Agngarayngay
http://www.patbadani.net

 

DESCRIPTION:

The New York Hilton, is an international hub co-dependent on electrical power for its functioning, and “Power Potential” uses the image of a chandelier at the New York Hilton Convention Center to trigger a video where luxury chandeliers – as if characters in a novel that fear the dark –contribute to creating mood and atmosphere with their light. A 54-second elevator ride through the Hilton’s 46 floors provides ruptures in space and time. We began work on the AR* TO VIEW project when Hurricane Sandy produced a massive power shortage in Manhattan, highlighting human dependency on electricity for work and everyday basics. Luxury hotel chandeliers culled from a Google image search, become a map of virtualities compacted via a theory of numbers to denote the Hilton’s sustainability power potential. In an OULIPO inspired impulse, we used the Hilton’s power-related numerical data to devise a system for the Augmented Reality project about this space. The AR* TO VIEW project at the Hilton shares an intrinsic quality with OULIPO’s ideas about reading, in that each artist’s image in the printed catalogue awaits “a reader, which yearns for him, which needs him in order to fully realize” itself as a trigger of potentialities.

KEYWORDS: electricity, sustainability, luxury, chandeliers, hotel power usage, oulipo