After searching the internet for others who might have encountered this, it seems that the freezing is simply impatience on my part to get into the game!

The deserted room in the cement factory is part of the tutorial - this means that the game wants the player to follow the steps -exactly- as instructed, or else you can't move on.

In this case, the instruction pointer is pointing at something and you -have- to click that thing before it can proceed to the next icon-change-instruction.

After those icons are explained, the player is then free to collect the remainder of the hidden objects.

Hope that helps others who think they're stuck!