Lapse

Lapse, 2026 dimensions variable, generative interactive animation, JavaScript, WebGL

Lapse is a generative animation navigated by scrolling or swiping – the same gesture used to browse a phone. As the viewer scrolls, an organic, undulating background is interrupted by rectangular frames that recall photo prints, framed pictures, or social media posts. Each frame holds an image brighter and higher-contrast than the background behind it, though still visibly related to it. Chromatic aberration is the only color present throughout, so every image reads as if it had been recorded and relayed through some unseen optical device, rather than viewed directly.

The piece grew out of a simple observation: sliding a thumb across a screen is almost identical, physically, to counting the beads of a rosary or a japamala – a repetitive, rhythmic motion that, in contemplative traditions, turns attention inward. On a phone, the same motion tends to do the opposite. Each swipe delivers a new image, a new micro-distraction, a new shift in perception. The gesture trains the hand toward dispersal rather than focus, and toward wanting more rather than settling.

Scrolling in Lapse offers no built-in goal or reward. Only after far longer than a typical scrolling session – after thousands of repetitions of the same gesture – does the image begin to fade into total black or white, depending on the direction of the scroll. That fade is the work's only "ending": not a new piece of content, but the absence of one.

Because Lapse withholds spectacle, contrast, and controversy, it also tests something in the viewer: whether they have the patience to keep going past the first swipe. Bouncing off early is not a failure of the piece – it's part of its result. Lapse asks whether a stretch of tedium pulls attention inward, the way counting beads does, or pushes it back out, toward easier stimulation. It does not hide the fact that, for many, the answer will be the latter.