During the pandemic, as we confined ourselves within glass vitrines, we consumed one another virtually in an attempt to soothe that increasingly tolerable pain we call loneliness. Locked inside our homes, deprived of physical contact, we became conditioned to a world where the best way to fulfill our physical and emotional needs is through a click. It became almost instinctive to open the black mirror we carry in our pockets to exchange affection with others — a nervous tic that compels us to navigate the abyssal voids of virtual windows.

ESC (Essay on Confinement) is an in-situ installation that questions the growing importance of digital technology in this time of physical isolation. The title refers to the “Escape” (Esc) key on computer keyboards, which in digital terms is associated with the action of stopping, canceling, exiting, or aborting. In these times of enclosure, virtuality appears to us as a form of evasion — a sensory escape through which we can simulate contact with others.

ESC consists of a machine built and programmed through Arduino, in which a three-dimensional cursor is pulled by a system of pulleys and motors that generate a cyclical movement in front of the window of an apartment on the fourth floor of a building in Bogotá.