ItWillNeverBeTheSame.com: A Looping Road Trip That’s Been Running Since 2004
There’s this website—ItWillNeverBeTheSame.com. Been live since 2004. If you type in the URL, you don’t land on some flashy homepage or a site trying to sell you something. You land inside a scene. A car’s dashboard. Nighttime. Endless road stretching out in front. That’s it. No words, no buttons. Just this hypnotic, continuous ride.
It was created by Rafaël Rozendaal, who’s basically one of the most well-known digital artists to ever use the internet as a canvas. And he wasn’t making websites to deliver information or functionality. He made them to be the artwork. ItWillNeverBeTheSame.com is one of over a hundred like that.
Rafaël Rozendaal and the Art of the Internet
Rozendaal’s work sits in this unusual space. He treats websites the way others treat paintings or sculptures. He buys a domain name, creates a visual experience, and that’s it—the domain is the art.
He’s been doing this since the early 2000s. Think of other sites like www.nothingeverhappens.com or www.openthiswindow.com. Each one is self-contained. There’s no backstory, no instructions, no ad banners. It’s just you and whatever’s happening onscreen. And that’s the point.
In the case of ItWillNeverBeTheSame.com, what’s “happening” is a quiet, slow drive. The scene never changes dramatically, but it doesn’t need to. The subtle motion—the passing lines, the gentle gradient of the sky—does something to your brain. It slows you down.
So What’s the Point?
At first, it might seem like nothing’s happening. But stick with it for 30 seconds and your mind starts filling in blanks. That’s where it gets interesting. Some people say it reminds them of road trips from their youth. Others feel a sense of loneliness. For a few, it’s just relaxing. It doesn’t tell you what to feel, which is rare these days.
The title—It Will Never Be The Same—hints at this subtle emotional undercurrent. Things change. You can’t go back. Even if you return to the site tomorrow, it’s not really the same. Sure, the pixels are in the same place, but you’re not in the same place.
Code as Collaboration
Rozendaal didn’t do this alone. The seamless animation and interaction come from Reinier Feijen, a Dutch developer who worked on several of Rozendaal’s pieces. His code makes it all flow—no loading times, no glitches. It feels like the kind of experience that just exists without effort, which means a lot of effort went into it.
The technical side stays invisible by design. You don’t think about it unless you go looking. But that’s part of why it works. It’s lightweight, fast, and behaves the same on just about any device—even after two decades.
The Website That Got Bought (and Stayed Public)
Here’s where it gets weird: Rozendaal sells these websites. Yes, like actual art. But with one rule—the site stays online, publicly accessible. He came up with this structure where the collector owns the domain name and the rights to the piece, but can’t wall it off or hide it. It’s like buying a sculpture for your yard but agreeing to let anyone stop by and look at it whenever they want.
ItWillNeverBeTheSame.com was sold under that model. It’s still up, still free. It’s one of the earliest examples of treating internet-native art like something with real, collectible value.
Now with NFTs and digital scarcity dominating the art-tech conversation, Rozendaal’s model feels way ahead of its time—but more grounded. No blockchain hype. Just simple ownership and shared access.
A Precursor to Digital ASMR?
Before ASMR blew up on YouTube, Rozendaal’s work was already tapping into some of that territory. The gentle repetition, the smooth movement, the focus on sensory rather than narrative engagement—it’s all there. Sites like ItWillNeverBeTheSame.com don’t stimulate in the traditional sense. They calm you down. They’re more about presence than performance.
It’s not just ASMR, though. It’s minimalism, meditation, nostalgia, and even a kind of resistance to the noise of the web. No tracking scripts, no updates, no “subscribe here” popups. Just a quiet drive that never ends.
Archived, Respected, and Still Running
Because it’s such a landmark piece of internet art, ItWillNeverBeTheSame.com is preserved in the Rhizome Artbase. That matters. Art gets forgotten all the time on the web. Flash dies, sites get taken down, links rot. But this one? It’s still live, still doing what it did in 2004.
It also shows up in places like Artsy and Artmap, alongside Rozendaal’s other works. It’s not obscure. In digital art circles, it’s canonical.
Why This Still Matters in 2025
Twenty years later, it’s even more relevant. Most of the internet is optimized for distraction now. Feeds, stories, shorts. Everything trying to keep you swiping, liking, commenting. ItWillNeverBeTheSame.com does none of that—and yet it holds your attention if you let it.
It’s a digital experience that rewards stillness. Not because it’s profound in a flashy way, but because it’s honest. It’s exactly what it claims to be. A moment you can’t repeat. A mood you can sit with. And a reminder that, yes, things move forward—even when you’re standing still.
Rozendaal built a piece of the internet that doesn’t age, doesn’t update, doesn’t beg for relevance. And that’s why it still works.