A webpage never truly ends; it is always in process of being. This is both the web’s blessing and its curse. Simply by continuing to do something, one feels a sense of fullness—yet one can never quite arrive at the feeling of having done something completely.

Whenever I think of “baekchangin.com”, the weight tilts toward the curse. I want this website to function, at least faintly, as an archive of past works. But if web work is essentially always a “work in progress,” is it valid to strip away that context of “in progress” and present it as the noun “work,” congealed and fixed? The “Connections” I saw yesterday and the “Connections” I see today are not the same. Can I testify to “Connections” as a stable noun?

In a world where everyone has internalized how the web operates, this concern may seem trivial. Seeing the date and the “yesterday” and “tomorrow” buttons on “Connections,” it’s not difficult to recognize it as a daily puzzle series. Those who feel inclined might revisit from time to time and clear the puzzles they’ve missed.

But when not overtly revealed, the web’s performativity becomes more problematic. The web artist collective Jodi’s website redirects you to a random project page every time you visit. In other words, “jodi.org” is not an entity but a state. Yet what we expect when we knock on the door of a URL is an entity, and so the state—temporarily fixed at the moment of request, of gaze—is perceived as such. The fullness of continually doing collapses into the flattened noun of a hyperlink. A curse. And like most curses, it is no one’s fault.

A webpage never truly ends; it is always in process of being. In other words, a webpage is still “로딩중.”[^1] I have no desire to translate “로딩중” into “로드 중” or “불러오는 중”. “로딩중” is not a mistake. When a violation of rules becomes the rule, it is no longer a violation—like the HTTP header “Referer” that refuses to become “Referrer,” or writing “쩜쩜쩜” instead of “점점점.”

Still, it is worth retracing what this strange word “로딩중” once desired. Thinking of phrases like “저장 중” or “설치 중,” perhaps we simply lacked an adequate two-syllable word to replace “load.” And so we look again at “Loading…”—a present participle without a subject or a verb, which might just as well be read as a gerund, or even as an independent noun. Like softly whispering a lover’s name: loading… In the place where translation fails, interference seeps in.

At any rate, the webpage is still “loading.” Yet this fact is so discreet that it is hardly felt. The temporal gap created by loading is defined as something to be resolved—or at least explained. Developers hastily plead, through progress indicators, that a response is indeed taking place. Like shouting “Coming!” at the sudden sound of a knock.

If everyone fully accepted that a webpage is always “loading,” such cries would be unnecessary. So why does the web attempt to explain itself, even at the cost of abandoning its own nature? As users have shifted from flâneurs wandering an arcade to direct consumers, the endlessly drifting webpage has been forced to adopt a clear end. No longer do we visit a webpage to encounter A; we visit in order to obtain A. If A is absent—or has somehow become B—this is considered an error. REST APIs recommend noun-based URIs that specify the resource to be returned. State management demands control over every possible latent state of data. Error handling smooths out even the disruptions that deviate from the seamless page. And the progress indicator, representing loading, finally whispers even the empty time itself like a lover’s name. From state to entity, from verb to noun. “loading” is the marker of this substitution.

In short, the webpage is still “loading,” and “loading,” with its murky origins, carries an equally ambiguous implication. On one hand, it serves as an allegory for the web’s performativity; on the other, it functions as a device that conceals that very performativity. The central conceit of this website was to appropriate the latter in order to reveal the former. The homepage of “baekchangin.com” lines up progress indicators so that loading itself becomes the object of attention. Those who waited endlessly for something “loaded” may feel betrayed, yet begin to sense that what was there all along was the act of waiting itself. Like Vladimir and Estragon, simply waiting for Godot.

That was the plan. But in building it, something felt off. Because the homepage of “baekchangin.com,” which appears to be “loading,” is in fact not loading at all. The looping progress indicators are merely a sequence of static GIFs—visible only after those resources have already been loaded. Here I lose my way. On one side, I am playing with “loading” as rhetoric; on the other, I am scrutinizing its technical precision. Should I persuade myself that it is poetic license, even if my homepage is not truly “loading”? Or should I build a truly “loading” website—one in which nothing ever arrives—and attempt to persuade its visitors? Both strategies seemed valid, and so neither seemed valid at all.

The questions scattered throughout this text resonate at a similar frequency. Is an endlessly looping array of indicators “loading” or “loaded”? Is a finite list of endless works “loading” or “loaded”? Are works archived, or is the archive reduced to work? Does “baekchangin.com” reveal Baek Changin, or Baek Changin’s works? Do I make the web in order to speak, or speak in order to make the web?

Faced with this oscillation, I decide to stop mixing. I will not resolve interference but instead use it as a generative force. This is not a new conclusion—it has already been witnessed in Deleuze, Joyce, Rauschenberg, Lynch. Yet those who work on the web operate under grammars and protocols that define the medium’s very validity. When we dismantle them, we do not encounter ethical or political critique; we risk producing something simply invalid. Conversely, the risk of invalidity compels us to faithfully obey the rules, inviting a new kind of danger. This text is, of course, a critique of the fast, commercialized, centralized web. But this danger precedes—and underlies—the fast, commercialized, centralized web.

In short, a blank canvas and a blank HTML document are not the same. The methodology for harnessing interference as generative force must also differ. To follow rules in order not to follow them. To observe, within the act of compliance, the possibilities of violation that naturally arise. Detours and appropriations. For instance, “baekchangin.com” should become uncertain whether it is “loading” or “loaded,” until that distinction itself no longer matters. In natural language, this ambiguity is easily marked by a question mark. But in a URL, “?” denotes a query string. Let us appropriate that delimiter so that it is read as a question mark. The delimiter no longer distinguishes anything; it attaches itself to “loading” and “loaded,” unsettling the identity of the webpage. And yet the webpage remains valid—and this fact is important enough to be stated.

Now we need a button that allows movement from “loading?” to “loaded?” and back again. Things become complicated. Consider the header of the Seoul Mediacity Biennale website created by AG Lab. The logo on the left functions, at first, as an indicator of the current state: “You are viewing the Seoul Mediacity Biennale website.” But on any page other than the homepage, the same visual element says something else: “You can go to the homepage.” From an indicator of the present state to a path toward another state. Meanwhile, the language selector on the right always functions as a path to another state. The interface—showing “EN” on the Korean page and “한” on the English page—resembles the play/pause mechanism of video platforms like YouTube. Yet due to the dual ontology of buttons on the web—as indicators of the current state and as paths to another state—the language selector inadvertently produces an ambiguity akin to the rabbit–duck illusion. We are accustomed to resolving such ambiguities through experience, but they remain latent, ready to surface at any time. If we transplant the logic of the language selector into the position of the logo, the website header quickly becomes unfamiliar.

Finally, there remains the question of the homepage. I believed that the root (“/”) of “baekchangin.com” should naturally point to “/loading.” But once “loading” becomes “loading?” and “loaded” becomes “loaded?,” the hierarchy between the two collapses. Now, entering “baekchangin.com” into the address bar randomly redirects to either “/loading?” or “/loaded?.” There is no “index” for the root—only an empty operational system for a double home. In other words, this website has two homes, or none—but not one.

At the forefront of web technology, developers continue to develop under the banner of the “modern web,” while alternative camps loosely gather at its periphery. Hybrid, maximalist webs. Webs that quietly long for the return of Web 1.0. Handmade webs. Webs as archives. Webs for small communities. Webs that encourage unauthorized reproduction, duplication, distribution, transmission. Webs that enact unauthorized reproduction, duplication, distribution, transmission. Musical webs. Webs of musicians. Webs for musicians. Webs for earthlings. Webs for extraterrestrials.

I extend my love and support to all of them. And yet I cannot shake the feeling that there is an empty space. I might as well make that space both my battleground and haven. I have long wanted to fight and rest here.

[^1]: In this section, I insist on using “로딩중” instead of “loading.” This text was originally written in Korean, where “loading” is commonly rendered as “로딩중.” Yet this is a peculiar construction—a hybrid combining “로딩,” which stands for “loading,” with “중,” which approximates the function of “-ing.” It is precisely this strange misuse that this section seeks to explore.