Lazy Loading

Internet platforms go to great lengths to make today’s web look like a polished product at all times. One popular technique to sand off the rough edges of technology is to show blurry versions of images until a high-resolution version has fully is ready for display. You can see this effect when scrolling through an Instagram feed with a slow network connection: images are rendered as soft-focus placeholders with a central white circle to indicate in-progress loading. These interim images serve as apologies that seek to hold your monetized attention despite poor network infrastructure, and to reduce the number of seams that you experience in your role as a “user” of their platform.

Lazy Loading takes that fleeting, expectant moment and inflates it to the limits of human attention. While working as artists-in-residence in rural Nebraska, we screen-captured a picture of a sunset from our Instagram feed before it had finished loading. We then recorded that image projected onto a hillside during a particularly picturesque sunset and divided the 40 minutes of video into 57,600 still frames. Nine frames taken at equal intervals from the video timeline comprise each unique print in Lazy Loading’s 6,400-print edition.