Error, the Unforeseen, and the Emergent

The Error and Interactive Media Art

Tim Barker
Respond to this Article
Volume 10 Issue 5 Oct. 2007

1 The condition that marks the post-digital age may be the condition for error. In the
condition where machinic systems seek the unforeseen and the emergent, there is also a
possibility for the unforeseen error to slip into existence. This condition can be seen in the
emerging tradition of artists using error as a creative tool. In his paper The Aesthetics of
Failure: Post-Digital Tendencies in Contemporary Music, Kim Cascone points to the way in
which composers, using digital means, exploit the inadequacies of a particular compositional
or performative technology (Cascone 13). Cascone cites composers such as Ryoji Ikeda who
create minimalist electronic compositions using media as both their form and theme. In these
compositions, the errors, imperfections, and limitations of the particular compositional media
are the central constituting elements of the piece. In addition to music, this glitch aesthetic is
also exploited in the visual arts. Artists such as Tony Scott set up situations in which errors
are able to emerge and be exploited in the art making process. In these types of work the
artists role is to allow a glitch or an error to arise in a specific system, then to reconfigure
and exploit the generative qualities of the unforeseen error.

Tony Scott, Glitch No. 13, 2001-2005

3 The generative capabilities of error can be understood through Lev Manovichs cultural
communication model developed in his paper Post-Media Aesthetics. Traditionally, a
pre-media cultural communication model represents the transmission of a signal as
SENDERMESSAGERECEIVER (Manovich, Post-Media Aesthetics 18). In this original
model the sender encodes and transmits a message over a communication channel; as
Manovich indicates, in the course of transmission the message is affected by any noise that
exists along the communication channel. The receiver then decodes the message. Here the
message is susceptible to error in two ways. First, the noise that originates from the
communication channel may alter the message. Second, there may be discrepancies between
the sender and receivers code (Manovich, Post-Media Aesthetics 18). Manovich, in order to
propose a post-digital consideration of transmission, has developed this model by including
the sender and receivers software. Post-digital cultural communication can now be
considered as SENDERSOFTWAREMESSAGESOFTWARERECEIVER (Manovich, Post-
Media Aesthetics 17-18). In this model the cultural significance of software is emphasised.
The software, much more than the noise introduced by the communication channel, may
change the message. Significantly, the software may introduce an error into the message.
Following Gilles Deleuze, we may say that the software may articulate a link to the field of
potential in order to generate unforeseen, and perhaps unwanted, information.
4 The cultural role that Manovich ascribes to software becomes elucidated in Dimitre Lima,
Iman Morandi, and Ant Scotts Glitchbrowser. Glitchbrowser is an alternative to the
traditional model of a web browser. This browser, rather than attempting to assist user
navigation of the internet, creates errors when displaying the pages that it accesses. The
images of any page accessed by Glitchbrowser are distorted or glitched through colour
saturation and abstraction from their original composition. In this work, following Manovichs
cultural communication model, the software that intervenes between sender and receiver
alters the content of the message. Thus in Glitchbrowser, the artists remind us that the
information we receive is largely reconstituted by the system it travels through. In a sense
the machine reveals itself, rather than creating the illusion of a transparent interface to
information. In the application of Glitchbrowser the user witnesses the way that messages
are transmitted and altered by the interface. Here, the machine reminds the user of its
existence (Manovich, The Language of New Media 206).

5 Any system that seeks the actualisation of unforeseen potential is also a system that has
the capacity to become errant. Rather than thinking of the error as something to fear or
avoid, we can think of an error as something that brings with it the capacity for the new and
the unforeseen (perhaps it is this link to the unforeseen that is precisely the reason that we
fear the errant). We can think of any system that is open to the unforeseen as surrounded by
a cloud of potential errors, or, as Deleuze would put it, a cloud of the virtual (Deleuze and
Parnet 148). At any point in its process, a system is traversing potential errorsand at any
point, one may become actualised. We can picture a potential for error at every point that a
system is opened to unformed information.

6 As a system attempts to actualise this unformed information, to form the unformed from
the cloud of the virtual, the system may also give form to an unformed error. Deleuzes
virtual can be understood as the field of pure potentiality. In this field there exists all those
things that could potentially become actualised in the course of a system, but for some
reason, do not. We can think of the virtual, from the present moment, as containing all the
potential events that could take place in the future. Only one of these events will become
actualised, becoming the actual present, and the other events will remain virtual. As Brian
Massumi describes, the virtual that Deleuze theorises is a mode of reality that is articulated in
the emergence of new potentialsthe virtual is implicated in the reality of change. A system,
in the event of change, moves through and connects to the virtual, actualising some
information and leaving other information as un-actualised virtuality. This system is
surrounded by a cloud of the virtual, surrounded by potential errors. At any moment, as the
system moves into the virtual it may actualise an error.

7 Rather than thinking of an event as the process by which preformed or preconceived

possible information becomes realised, we can only think of an error as coming into being
as the unformed and the unforeseen potential is actualised. This potential emerges from
unique activities that occur in the process of a system. These unique activities open the
system so that unforeseen information may emerge (DeLanda, Intensive Science and Virtual
Philosophy 36-37). If a system runs through its process without the potential for error it is
essentially closed. It does not allow the potentiality of the emergent or the unforeseen. It is
only through allowing the capacity for potential errors that we may provide the opportunity to
think the unthought, to become-other, and to hence initiate further unforeseen becomings in
the virtual (Rodowick 201). In a sense, when there is potential for an error to emerge in a
system, the system cannot be regarded as a pre-formed linear progress; rather, it can only
be thought as a divergent process that actualises elements of the virtual.

8
Images from Yann Le Guennec Le Catalogue

9 Yann Le Guennecs Le Catalogue is an example of artist designed software causing

unforeseen errors. This online work allows public access to a catalogue of images and
installations created between 1990 and 1996. Every time a page is accessed from the
archive, an intended error is activated in the form of an intersecting horizontal and vertical
line, generated at random points over the image. The more that the page is viewed, the
greater its deterioration by the obscuring intersecting line and the closer the image comes to
abstraction. As Eduardo Navas states, the archive is similar to analogue vinyl records losing
their fidelity and being slightly deteriorated every time the needle passes through the
groove. In Le Guennecs catalogue the act of accessing and consulting an object of the
archive, in essence, causes an internal error to the object. This is an error that is inbuilt; it is
an error that we cause by the act of looking or accessing any of the images. As we access the
image we allow a virtual error to become actual. Eventually the error will take over the
original image, and the image will be more about error than it ever was about its referent.

10

Images from Yann Le Guennec Le Catalogue

11 Just as in Cascones glitch music, the form and the theme of Le Catalogue is error. In Le
Catalogue we see the potential for error whenever information is mediated; the work
becomes a reflection on the act of looking, but looking through a particular paradigm, looking
through the interface. The works archive can only be preserved by allowing the images to
exist, un-accessed, behind the interface. But this work is not about preservation. It is
ultimately about the ephemeral and its uniqueness. Each error caused by the user, which
becomes actual from the virtual, is uniqueand each time the archive is accessed it is
differentiated from its past. Every time an image is accessed, it becomes its own original;
every time an error from the field of the virtual is actualised, the unforeseen emerges.

12 In these types of works the error can be understood through a Deleuzian ontology as a
generative and creative force. As mentioned above, in order to position the condition for
error as the condition for the unforeseen, we can think of the errant system as involved in a
process of making actual potential from the virtual. In contrast, the system that holds no
potential for error is involved in the process of realising possibilities. The possible follows a
line toward an already established attractor; in this instance the future is closed as it is
already given in the present. If we could access information in Le Catalogue without causing
the unforeseen error, the information is possible. If this were the case, any selection from the
archives menu would return a preformed image. In opposition to this, the potential moves
through processes of bifurcation and divergence toward chaotic attractors; in this case the
future is open (DeLanda, Deleuze and the Open-Ended Becoming of the World).

13 Actualisation is separate from realisation in that realisation suggests a passage from the
possible to the static. Actualisation implies the production of something new and
unforeseen, a becoming virtual that results in new possibilities and transformations (Lvy).
The possible exists in a state of limbo as an already constituted thing; the only thing
separating the real from the possible is existence. The possible is thus thought of as a latent
phantom reality (Lvy 24).

14 If we were only ever interested in realising the possible then errors would not be a
concern. The system only becomes errant when we seek the unformed. This occurs
whenever we actualise information from the field of the virtual. The virtual error is to be
thought of as the potential that may or may not come into being through a process of
actualisation. As Lvy states, the virtual is that which has potential rather than actual
existence The tree is virtually present in the seed (23). The seed does not know what
shape the tree will take, as it would in a possible-real model. Rather the seed must actualise
the tree as it enacts a process of negotiation between its internal limitations and the
environmental circumstances that it encounters through this process. We can thus see
potential errors as virtual in that the system does not know the errors that it may actualise.
The system actualises these errors as it explores its degrees of freedom and the
circumstances that may allow the emergence of error.

15 As the potential for error marks the potential for the new and the unforeseen, we can see
that an error in itself may be creative. An error may be utilised. It may be sought out
and used to create the unforeseen within traditional systems, such as our routine computer
use. In these instances, as the unique generative qualities of error are actualised, the artist
can no longer be thought of as the sole creative force. Rather it is now the artists role to
provide the circumstances for an error to emerge. The error fills the potentiality of a system
with meaning, whether intended or unintended by the designer. It is the participants
interrelationship with this error that may be thought to proliferate artistic meaning. The
aesthetics of the digital encounter occur as an interactive event between participant and
machine, with the artist, in a sense, hidden behind the machine. When an error occurs,
unforeseen to the artist, the work is affected and possibilities are created for new meanings
to emerge.

16
Participant in Blast Theorys Desert Rain

17 Desert Rain, a complex mixed reality environment, by the group Blast Theory, actualises
errors and exposes its software limitations in ways unintended by the artists. The work
involves six participants that are asked to navigate a digitally generated landscape of the Gulf
War in order to locate a target. This digitally generated space is projected upon a curtain of
water spray. Once all the participants have found their targets they are lead through the rain
curtain, over a sand dune and to a representation of a hotel room. In this room there is a
television screen that displays one of the targets narrating their real life experience of the
Gulf War. The digital target is now made actual as a physically real, yet still mediated,
person. This work presents a space in which the real and the digital mutually affect one
another; the participants experience in the digital landscape directs the meaning that they
take from the targets real life narrative, and the experience of this narrative affects the
participants memories of the digital landscape. The overall experience of Desert Rain is
constituted by the coming together of the material and the digital spaces so that they may
produce a mixed reality space.

18 However, the actual functioning of Desert Rain does not always provide the means for
the theoretical tessellated space that Blast Theory seeks. This is due to certain errors
and limitations in the machinic system. But these are not necessarily aesthetic bugs; in fact
they may enhance the aesthetics of the form of the work. For instance, the digitally
generated graphics are rather clumsy and hard edged, with a slow frame rate and low
definition. Also, some participants found it difficult to use the footplate effectively (Benford et
al. 54). For these reasons, the space of the digital and the space of the real remain separate,
with the participant struggling to manipulate the interface in order to access the digital; the
sometimes errant functionality of the interface acts as a barrier between the digital and the
material. However, this technical bug may enable the participant to grapple with the machinic
in ways which would not occur had the machine been perfect. As Blast Theory and the
Communications Research Group point out, ethnographic research into interaction has found
that this technical bug was generally only seen as a detriment to the work by those
participants with a technical background (Benford et al. 53-55). Those participants, in
contrast, with an artistic background tended to see the limitations of the form as a conscious
aesthetic gesture. That is, the slowness and clumsiness of the media became directly
connected to the larger purpose of the work, which is to criticise the medias coverage of the
Gulf War and the general place of media in our daily lives. Here, for the artistically inclined
audience, form and content come inextricably linked. Thus the error in the form is
inextricable from the meaning of the work. The imprecise navigation, due to the nature of the
footplate, through the obvious and imprecise mediated imaging of the world, directly links to
the experience of receiving information through television broadcasts. In a sense the
limitations of the media and the interface device are embodied, quite unintentionally, in the
content of the work.

19 If the participant of interactive digital media is to be thought of as coupled to the

machine, when the machine becomes errant, the participant shares in this condition. The
interactive participant experiences limitations, glitches, or bugs first hand; they are, in some
respects, party to the glitches and bugs and a part of the systems limitations. New media
theorists and artists such as Valie Export, have already pointed out that the subjective space
of the viewer co-exists with the objective space of the machine. As a result the user is tied to
the machine and thus connected to its glitches. This is because the work is not just
constituted by the machine and its substrate but also by the way the human responds to the
immersive environment. The work no longer takes place in a time and space that is separate
from the spectator. Rather the time and space of the spectator and the time and space of the
machine are both implicit in the realisation of the work. Thus, the spectators time and space
has become filled with the potential for error. The participant and the machine are mutually
engaged in a process of becoming virtual; they deliberate together, as one system that
moves into the field of potential.

References
Benford, Steve, et al. Pushing Mixed Reality Boundaries. eRENA, 1999.
Cascone, Kim. The Aesthetics of Failure: Post-Digital Tendencies in Contemporary Computer
Music. Computer Music Journal 24.4 (Winter 2000).
DeLanda, Manuel. Deleuze and the Open-Ended Becoming of the World. New York, 1998. 23
Mar. 2006 <http://www.diss.sense.uni-konstanz.de/virtualitaet/delanda.htm>.
. Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy. Transversals: New Directions in Philosophy. Ed.
Keith Pearson. London: Continuum, 2002.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Claire Parnet. The Actual and the Virtual. Dialogues 2. Ed. Eliot Ross
Albert. London and New York: Continuum, 1987.
Export, Valie. Expanded Cinema as Expanded Reality. 2003. 17 Mar. 2006
<http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/03/28/expanded_cinema.html>.
Lvy, Pierre. Becoming Virtual: Reality in the Digital Age. New York: Plenum Trade, 1998.
Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2001.
. Post-Media Aesthetics. Locations. Ed. Astrid Sommer. Karlsruhe: ZKM: Centre for Art
and Media, 2001.
Massumi, Brian. Sensing the Virtual, Building the Insensible. Architectural Design 68.5/6
(1998): 16-24.
Navas, Eduardo. Net Art Review November 30 December 6, 2003. 2003. 20 Jul. 2007
<http://www.netartreview.net/featarchv/11_30_03.html>.
Rodowick, D. N. Gilles Deleuzes Time Machine. Post-Contemporary Interventions. Eds. Stanley
Fish and Fredric Jameson. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1997.

Citation reference for this article

MLA Style

Barker, Tim. "Error, the Unforeseen, and the Emergent: The Error and Interactive Media Art."
M/C Journal 10.5 (2007). <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0710/03-barker.php>.

APA Style

Barker, T. (Oct. 2007) "Error, the Unforeseen, and the Emergent: The Error and Interactive
Media Art," M/C Journal, 10(5). Retrieved from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0710/03-
barker.php>.