“…the error condemned today will sooner or later find itself in the treasure houses of discovery. - Michel Serres, Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time

It is fairly agreed in the field of media arts that the aesthetics of interactive media are articulated to the event. But just what do we mean by the term event? And how do we come to understand the error that is emergent within this event? In this paper I attempt to provide some possible answers to these questions by investigating the manner in which interactive media art systems may become errant. When the productive interrelationships formed between human and machine systems seek the unforeseen and the emergent there is also a possibility for the unforeseen error to slip into existence. This occasion of interrelationship is an event, in which is enfolded the potential for error.
If time were laid out on a timeline, with one earlier event directing a later event then the emergence of an error, in this neat system of cause and effect, would be relatively predictable. We could see that when A occurs it produces B – the error. But this is not the way time is, and it is not the way events exist either in our day to day lives or in interaction with a digital system. Events exist, as A.N. Whitehead and Gilles Deleuze tell us, as complexes of occasions, all enfolded in the one event, not as a neatly linear sequence of compartmentalised occasions. B is thus enfolded in A, for B –the error – to be brought into existence it must be unfolded from A (Whitehead The Concept of Nature 75). Here I take my starting point from Whitehead’s process philosophy and Deleuze’s philosophy of the virtual. These philosophers provide us with a means to understand the event, and, by extrapolating from these thinkers, a means to understand the event of the digital encounter. Once we understand the event through this framework we can begin to examine the place of errors in this system.” Continue reading The Error and the Event by Tim Barker, vector X#06: Errors and Glitches.

“In 2004, as a fledgling academic on the final year of my undergraduate degree course in Multimedia Design, I had a choice to research any field that I was interested in. I set myself quite a lofty challenge to discuss the qualities and characteristics of Glitch Art, a term I had first come across on Ant Scott’s weblog at Beflix.com as early as 2001.

Back then, for the most part, I found myself juggling ‘learning how to research’, ‘writing’ and eventually putting into practice what I was exploring and learning. This was also my first chance to seek out, converse and form friendships with designers and artists utilising the Glitch Aesthetic in their work. The highlight of it all was a long term collaboration with Ant Scott, which led to the publication of is possibly the first book showcasing contemporary Glitch Art and Design (Designing Imperfection ISBN: 0979966663) incorporating work from a multitude of international artists and designers who primarily use the Glitch Aesthetic.

Since then on a handful of occasions, I have also found myself in a position of evangelising Glitch Art or defining what can be construed as the Glitch Aesthetic. This article is a semi reflective account which tells the brief story of how I personally dealt with this topic, and summarises some key points from my early writing, it concludes by presenting briefly some of the challenges one might face if looking at the field of Glitch Art today.” Continue reading Seeking Perfect Imperfection. A personal retrospective on Glitch Art by Iman Moradi, vector X#06: Errors and Glitches.