Loading... is an exploration of the concepts of waiting, anticipation and mindfulness. The work is intended to draw the viewer's attention to an often-overlooked and mundane aspect of our daily lives — the time we spend waiting for things to happen.

In our modern technology-driven world we are constantly bombarded with information and stimuli, and it can be easy to overlook the time we spend waiting for various processes to complete—whether we’re waiting for a webpage (or NFT) to load, a video to buffer, or a file to transfer, we often find ourselves staring at a screen or device, watching a loading bar slowly fill up. And then there are all of the things that we wait for in the physical world that don’t come with loading bars. I’m reminded of “the waiting place” from Oh, the Place You’ll Go! By Dr. Seuss.

I got the idea for Loading…at around 7:33 pm on October 6, 2022 when I minted ropes spikes knots #N #9 by DigitCell https://www.fxhash.xyz/gentk/1205449 The artwork takes about 60-80 seconds to load on my macbook Pro, and while I was waiting for my output to load I thought “What if the loading WAS the art?”

I chuckled to myself and jotted the idea down in my sketchbook, also noting a movie reference it reminded me of: the scene in Office Space where Peter is trying to save his work and sneak out a few minutes early before Lumberg asks him to work on the weekend:

(Also notice how the YouTube timeline fills like a loading bar)

Which also reminded me of the scene from Megamind where Minion doesn’t *quite* have the solar laser beam software loaded in time:

We live in a fast-paced world where instant gratification is the norm, distractions abound, and having to wait for something can feel annoying and inconvenient. These moments of waiting can often be boring, frustrating or anxious, but they can also evoke feelings of anticipation and excitement, or humour as seen above. Rather than becoming frustrated or distracted, it’s important to appreciate the small moments of time when we find ourselves stuck waiting for something with nothing else to do. It’s easy to become reliant on our devices to fill all of the little gaps in our days when we are bored or have these spare moments. Our first instinct is often to start scrolling through our feeds or playing a game while we wait to pass the time.

But waiting gives us a chance to slow down and take a break from the hustle and bustle of everyday life; not just another excuse to plug back into it. It can be easy to get caught up in the rush and forget to take moments for ourselves. But when we are forced to wait, we are given the opportunity to pause and reflect. This can be a great time to practice mindfulness: take a few deep breaths, focus on the present moment, and mentally reset, rather than worrying about the future, dwelling on the past, or checking your phone. Look around. You’re here. Alive! Today, now. Your life bar continues slowly filling up.

Through its gradual progression and eventual completion, the loading bar becomes a symbol of the passage of time and the constant forward movement of our lives, chapter by chapter, from beginning to end.

To continue the countdown theme I thought that it made sense to have the project sit in the upcoming queue for over a week and open on new year’s eve, when the bar for 2022 will complete and change to a new one for 2023.

I also decided to make it an open edition starting at 999, and burning half of the remaining every 24 hours until gone.

I liked that Loading... was a simple, minimalist visual concept that kept making me chuckle when I initially thought about the absurdity of it as a generative art piece, and I liked that it could also concisely represent the above ideas about waiting, anticipation and mindfulness.

So I thought of a few different variables and decided to make it. Most of the development time was spent testing different types of bars, colour palettes, trying to avoid bad colour combos and testing/fixing minor bugs.

Here are the final parameters:

• 21 colour palettes.
• The colour palette stays the same for most, but some will randomly change the palette with each new bar.
• The background colour can stay the same, or change with each bar.
• The background can have a gradient.
• Loading bars can be skinny, medium, thick, or full screen. They can stay a consistent thickness, vary slightly within their original thickness, or vary to any random thickness from skinny to thick.
• Loading speeds can be all slow, medium, fast, or randomly change for each bar.
• Finally, the corners of the loading bars can be square or rounded.

Thank you for reading! I appreciate your interest in my work and hope you like Loading...

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