Rose Window

Apple’s spinning wait cursor, “the rainbow wheel of death”, presents itself as a joyful pinwheel to distract from the impending sense of doom one feels during an encounter with it, knowing the terrible task of choosing between remaining stuck in frozen computer purgatory or a manual reset resulting in the potential loss of hours of work is imminent.

By projecting the spinning animation onto an iconic rose window pattern, a stained glass format commonly used in Gothic cathedrals to illustrate the Last Judgment, this seemingly trivial moment of computer glitch is elevated into the realm of religious ceremony. Through absurd exaggeration, Rose Window presents Apple’s wait cursor as a divine entity, bringing into plain view the comparison of our cultural relationship with computing technology to that of organized religion, promising us happiness, connectedness, and eternal life in paradise -- with the key distinction that technology asserts it can accomplish this here on Earth. In this context, the overbearing presence of the giant pinwheel poses the new question, at what cost?