Waiting Games (Vector Festival 2025)

Description

“Waiting Games” is a series of three interactive artworks that explore the loss of digital liminality in our shift toward constant stimulation and instant gratification.

“Waiting Games” is a series of interactive artworks that explore the loss of digital liminality in our shift toward constant stimulation and instant gratification, created in response to the Vector Festival 2025 theme, “404_not_found.”

In place of algorithms and never-ending doomscrolls, audiences are invited to interact with three retro icons of digital static-ness and delay, reimagined as whimsical gamified experiences. Each experience draws upon the collective memories of the improvised games, imaginative narratives and hypnotic trances created by bored minds staring at slow-moving screens. In transporting audiences back to these broken, looping, and half-forgotten spaces, “Waiting Games” invites viewers to reconnect with the absurdity and creativity born from waiting. What have we lost in our abandonment of slowness? Do delay and decay have a space in our everyday lives?

Individual Artworks

Wheel of Death Disco:

Why scream at frustration at that never ending loading bar or the spinning wheel of death when you can party with them instead? Even as the music makes these icons lose control, you’ll be having the time of your life.

“Wheel of Death Disco” reimagines Apple’s iconic rainbow loading wheel, transforming it from a icon of frustration to the life of the party. In this interactive reimagining, the wheel responds to viewers dancing with the piece, brightening, expanding and exploding with colour.

Trapped in a Desktop: 

Come and visit the trendiest hidden gem in the middle of nowhere – the abandoned desktop of an early 2000’s Window XP operating system. There is so much to discover – until you click away to the next thing on your to-do list. “Trapped in a Desktop” brings to life a child’s reimagining of the og liminal space – the desktop of an early 2000’s Window XP operating system. What would happen if you could run through the never-ending rolling hills? Gaze up at the pixel perfect sky? Let your hand become one with mouse and reach out to grab your favourite icons?

Visitors gain the ability to wander through the familiar landscape, using motion to “drag and drop” different icons reimagined as hats, shirts, fun signs, etc.

Logo Bounce:

How many hours have you spent watching the bouncing DVD logo, wishing you could make that logo hit the corner? This one’s for you.

“Logo Bounce” redesigns the classic neon bouncing DVD logo to be an interactive game, where the viewer gains control.

Credits

Produced By	whengracecreates
Artist/Interaction Design	Grace Sun

Media