Waiting
Hopes, fears, buffering: an art installation for your mobile device.
Everything is faster, and yet we still wait. Loading, booting (and rebooting), buffering—represented in spinning wheels, progress bars and completion percentages are the imposed pauses on our daily lives. A click takes an instant. The hope for a response grows stronger during that interminable wait. Waiting looks at the most mundane part of our day through the graphic representations built to help us wait.
The spinning wheel’s sole purpose is to assure us that things have not frozen, merely loading. But the spinners are subject to the same glitches they are there to hide. Angst arises quickly when the spinning wheel stops spinning, if even for a split second. All we can do is wait.
As part of group show /Glitch each artist is represented by an AR-code – an augmented reality marker embedded with visual information that can only be viewed with the aid of a computer or smart-phone. As visitors walk through the gallery, they can interact with the markers using either their smart-phone or one of the tablets that will be provided by the gallery. When a visitor points their phone at the marker for Waiting, one of several handmade spinning wheel GIFs appears on their phone. And because they're endlessly looping, Waiting tests their patience. They wait for the artwork to appear; not realizing that the spinning wheel is the artwork.
A Project by Addie Wagenknecht and Pablo Garcia
Made for "Economics + The Immaterial", an exhibit for Run Computer Run (Part of /GLITCH) At Rua Red (South Dublin Arts Centre), Ireland.
Installation View. The work is embedded in the code posted on the wall. When you point your phone at the code, the GIF loads on top of the code. The piece is made of handmade GIFs animating spinning buffering wheels. Visitors watch and assume they are waiting for the artwork to load, unaware that the piece is the waiting.
