The first work of visual art to depict the September 11 terrorist attacks was in all probability Untitled (2001) by Wolfgang Staehle. The status of being “the earliest” could only be achieved by its being simultaneous. On September 6, 2001, three panoramic live web-cam views, showing an 11th-century monastery in Bavaria, the television tower in Berlin and the New York skyline, offering a giant postcard vista or a contemporary veduta, were projected on the walls of Postmasters Gallery in Chelsea (NYC), and from then on were to be incessantly transmitted there via the internet. This could have been a repetition of one of Staehle's previous works, Empire 24/7 (1999–2004), a static take of New York's Empire State Building, which echoed – and brought into the 21st century – Andy Warhol's notoriously 8-hour-long film Empire (1964). However, five days after the exhibition opened, the still image of lower Manhattan captured the unfolding events of 9/11, updating them every few seconds like a TV coverage – but putting them in the context of art.

Until that morning, any changes in the pictures, limited to light and the weather, were slow and hardly noticeable, which suited Staehle's intention: “I wanted viewers to consider how they experience time… We're all running around all the time. I wanted to make people feel aware” (qtd. in Lehner).