as you reach out and brush aside the low hanging branches, the yellowish leaves rustle under the touch of your fingers. you emerge from the trees. to your left you see a low apartment block in a late stage of construction. some windows still have protective sheets on them. the walls of the block form a flattened plane of beige. no texture, maybe just yet, perhaps it will be added later; in the intense light of the sun it matters little, who could tell the difference at all. to your right a road cuts through the trees. no traffic, not today, not at this hour, if ever. in front of you a parking lot lies waiting for prospective traffic. a light grey stretch of desaturated paving, blinding now in the mid day heat, as you have stepped out of the shade of the trees, crossed the vacant lot and made your way toward the ev charging station on the far side. you inspect the station, it is still new and appears unused. your fingertips trace the clusters of thick air bubbles that have formed below the protective overlay covering the screen, beset with tiny bubbles and coated in dust and pollen. the intense light makes the display hard to read and yet it is perfectly preserved underneath the adhesive overlay from scratches and stains, obscenities written in permanent marker and other nasty things that users of the station would not like to experience while charging their vehicle.

the adhesive back keeps the overlay firmly in place

while it extends touch screen life

guards from harsh environmental elements

and reduces LCD & monitor abuse

you wonder: how many fingertips will it take to wear down the protective layer, to thin it out until it cracks and then what? blisters off? crumbles? its bits and pieces carried off by the warm wind? electric currents flow through the hot air from your fingertips to the screen: unlike the heat this is a pleasant experience. you cause the liquid crystals below the glass to rotate, but this achieves nothing, no intermittence in the repeating patterns of images that show what this site is primed to become: a haven for cars and bikes and busses that never seem to arrive, only to depart; vehicles that in an indeterminate future will have been charged. as you observe these speculative comings and goings on the screen, you wonder what users of the station would like to experience while charging their vehicle. or maybe they would not want to experience anything at all. the sound of rustling leaves flows from the other side of the lot. you wonder how the user interface will look like, this demo has no words. how will they wrap around this site of interaction once the station is active? you think about the number of choices, how they branch out, how many fingertips will try to hold on or activate the spectral representation of a certain word until it slides away, gets replaced by another until an outcome is confirmed. what will be the most popular prompts, the ones that will wear thin the fastest. in the current light of the visual world you live in, where everything around you is colourful and bright, all these outcomes are reduced to barely visible content that forever moves away from this place, sliding into an unseen future just out of frame to make way for the next iteration, the one after, the one after that. the panelled images are projected at high brightness to counter the sun. due to the air gaps in the air bonded overlay there is a notable loss of contrast. everything appears bleached. the soft bend of a concrete pond exacts another shallow body of water; the horizon lines are perfectly aligned, while buildings shift abruptly into each other, pathways end in a jagged pattern of disregard for seamlessness. there is no water in the place you are now. the polyurethane feels warm. you dab against the bubbles, they are surprisingly firm. the sun shines as it has to on the screen in front of you. imperceptibly the bubbles change their form. you feel them moving under your fingertips.