A screensaver by Harm van den Dorpel, 2020
“Temporality is” is an artwork in the form of screensaver that uses Gaussian smoothing, a function used in noise reduction for digital images, and a frozen loading spinner, to adorn live uploaded images scraped from photo sharing sites. The images are shown for a random number of seconds before disappearing. The blurring effect and static circle emulate a frozen moment in time, eliciting a sense of disruption in the viewer waiting for the theatricality that has become standard in UX culture. The work renders the mundane as a digital artefact without opulence but with an almost unnerving sense of pause in time that requires a still appreciation o...