Permanent collection
Twelve rooms, 5 min 39 s of waiting
Each room runs in real time. Nothing here can be fast-forwarded, because a wait that can be skipped teaches you nothing about waiting.
- MW-001 The Handshake Two modems negotiate a shared language, out loud, at some length.
- MW-002 Seek and Return A read head hunts across a spinning disk for a file scattered in pieces.
- MW-003 An Honest Progress Bar A bar that reports exactly what it knows, including that it does not know.
- MW-004 One Line at a Time A page crosses the country as sound, arriving slowly from the top down.
- MW-005 Load From Tape A program arrives as audio from a cassette, and any dropout is fatal.
- MW-006 Defragmentation Coloured blocks shuffle themselves into order while you watch, hypnotised.
- MW-007 The Render Queue One frame at a time, with an estimate that keeps changing its mind.
- MW-008 Interlaced Arrival A picture appears blurred and whole, then sharpens, rather than loading top to bottom.
- MW-009 Submitted for Batch You hand your work to an institution and are told to come back tomorrow.
- MW-010 Buffering A video hoards a few seconds of future so the present can run smoothly.
- MW-011 Please Insert Disk 7 Software arrives in a stack, and the stack must be fed in order.
- MW-012 The Board Updates Split-flap letters clatter through the alphabet to tell you the wait grew longer.
0 of 12 rooms stamped in this browser.