2021
Ticker hardware, software development
67 x 12 cm
Several characters in Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude bore the name Aureliano Buendía. They were all relatives of the same clan, the Buendías. One of its first members was Colonel Aureliano Buendía; the last of the Buendías was also named after him. The clan ended with him: the last of the Buendías was eaten by ants, and the city in which their clan lived was completely destroyed by a flood.
The Red Ants and Black Ants animated effects were added to Microsoft Word in 1998 and removed in 2007. These effects placed an animated frame around the text, with a dashed line flowing around it in a clockwise direction, creating the effect of ants marching around the text.
The animated digital ant race has died out, leaving behind dubious artifacts in the memory of millennials and a few family screenshots. The extinct digital ants endlessly eat the digitized Buendia - either the last one, or all of them at once. After the end of history, the end of the world begins, but perhaps it is ongoing, has ended, and/or never began.
