The Recorded Stroke

A spray booth of a porcelain and bathroom works near Stockholm on a dark November afternoon, a white mist hanging in the hard light of two booth lamps, a bathtub hanging from an overhead conveyor hook half coated in fresh white enamel, beside it a painting robot, a boxy mint-green base cabinet with a door, a green turntable with two inclined hydraulic cylinders, a long pale grey-cream arm ending in a slim spray nozzle and a guide handle, a painter's hand in a stiff leather glove on the handle, behind a grey control cabinet on a green cross-shaped foot with rows of glowing coloured buttons, all blank, every surface plain and unmarked.