Depicting the Found state, the Shell ‘spectacular’ sign is a pioneering example of the intersection between commercial use of neon lighting, electricity and mass automobile adoption, and remains a relic of the existing gas station.

The Former panel questions what an architecture of proto-symbol is, an anti-type. Pre-automobile but post-industrial, the frame carries the latent potential of the repetition, an empty vessel co-opted by the attention economy. While the Future imagines the hyper-capitalist cathedral, escalating and distorting the apparatus of advertising, of signs and symbols. Paradoxically, in a world saturated by images, it questions whether a monument to the consumer exists if space is post-digital.