When Errors occur

 
︎ Mar, 2022

 

‘Error’ is a state of dysfunction, disorder, obtrusiveness, and a deviation from what we expected. In common sense, it is the opposite of those terms like "right" and "order" that everyone strives for, and we usually also think of error as a negative situation that is undesirable to all of us. However, the error is not supposed to contain any properties inherent to good or bad. The word was conventionally preconditioned by our standards of value which are based on hierarchical systems. It acts like a boundary, a ruler, guiding the sides of what we should and shouldn't do. And this is where artists and contemporary designers come into play. They seek to amplify the tensions on this boundary by playing with errors, hence challenging those existing norms.


Imperfection is more of a fact than the perfect order we seek, and it is particularly accelerated by the high fragility of today's digital media. Error is universal and inevitable, even I can say it is more often happened than correct. Especially in the digital age, artist and theoretician, Hito Steyerl has mentioned in particular about misrecognition of information, ’Not seeing anything intelligible is the new normal. Information is passed on as a set of signals that cannot be picked up by human senses.[1] ‘Less visibility could then result in more chances of error happening and remain unfixed. Today's products are designed to be more complex and multi-functional, and closely linked to much larger systems. They can affect the entire system once one small part fails, which makes errors more difficult to detect and resolve. These items have become more like black boxes, with attractive packaging that hides the facts and materials inside the box. The more invisible and fragmented, unreliable technology is then be transformed by designer and artists into artistic expression and acts as a tool for new changes.


The most obvious situation of errors we encounter could be display errors. Flickering and erratic screen brightness, randomly distributed colored lines, snowy and irregular pixel patterns, layer shifts with misaligned edges, etc. are some visual experiences that often come to mind regarding such errors. There is an interesting example in a youtube video[2](fig.1) where a strange and disturbing effect occurs on the monitor, where a scrambled zebra pattern gradually appears on a person's face. Although this was actually due to a liquid crystal[3]failure of the polarization inside the display, the video on the web has also been taken as evidence of the existence of shapeshifters in reality, being another misinterpretation after the error occurred. In his artistic practice, Gustav Metzger also uses this fundamental substance in LCDs to present the degradation and vulnerability of the technology in his work "Liquid Crystal Environment"[4](fig.2). He inserted heat-sensitive liquid crystals into the projector and used certain mechanisms to control the movement of the slices, resulting in immediate changes in the patterns and colors of liquid crystals. The work creates an immersive space surrounded by projections that allows us to perceive instability and temporality itself, it seeks to present dysfunction and destruction as the new normal and also reflects the effects of machinery on ourselves.


Among the traditional design principles, mentioned by Dor Norman in his fundamental work The Design of Everyday Things, is that objects should be designed with the ideology of ‘producing a pleasurable experience’ and fulfilling people's needs[5]. When an error occurs, it will destroy such functionality. This could bring an interval and put the object into a blank space where we finally have a chance to see it thoroughly. Normally when it functions well, these features will be too taken for granted to be ignored. However, when errors occur, it stops our established patterns in the first place. Unloadable web pages, flickering and crashing software, halting computer screens, lagging hard drives, disorganized text, and other such error conditions, make us temporarily lose the ability to act and be productive in a consistent manner as usual. At this point, we cannot stand simply as a user enjoying a smooth digital service and using it within the system; the error forces us to leave it, to look at it from another perspective, to analyse it, to see through what is happening.


The pause caused by mistakes is therefore allowing void and space for creativity. It can give us breathing room in our busy lives and allows playfulness and enjoyment, pausing us to relax with a non-serious attitude. A 404 page[6], for example, is one of the most recognizable errors on the world wide web. It has no function other than to inform us that our attempt at the requested server has failed and will not provide us with desired information like other pages that load normally. But the web designers added many interesting elements to make it a fun experience rather than a disappointment. For example, the 404 page of New Museum features Maurizio Cattelan’s ‘Untitled’[7](fig.3), showing a horse's head accidentally disappearing into the ‘white wall’ in the background of that page, which provides a sense of humor to this usually unpleasant accident. A similar concept applies in Google Chrome, where a hidden Easter egg is shown when the user disconnects from the Internet[8]. By this time an 8-bit dinosaur character will appear and it will blink its eyes occasionally. When the user hits the space bar on the keyboard, it will then be activated as a running game. In these examples, the dysfunctional pages seem to be more playful and imaginative than the correct ones.


Errors take us away from the perfect dream world and give us the opportunity to step outside the constructed illusion; what it also does is push us into a more central part of our being, driving us to realize the disorder is real. Obsessed with exploring and representing states that are not 'correct' in digital media, artist Clement Valla has created the work 'Postcards from Google Earth'[9](fig.4). This work is a collection of images of anomalies fluid roads, distorted surfaces of space in the Google Earth system. According to Clement, the images appear to be wrong, but they are indeed algorithmically correct, except that it is a false model for the human perspective. This work also explores how Google Earth uses a technique to stitch images together and create illusions for digital representations of the model. What it brings to light is the reality that models generated by computers tend to be imperfect.


Although scientists and engineers have been spending efforts to identify and correct errors, with a combination of both artistic and technical perspectives, we would be able to reflect more on this process. In 2018, artist and coder Kyle McDonald wrote an article[10]on the implausibility that arise from machine learning in generative face images. Mistakes such as asymmetrical earrings, incomplete teeth, and inexplicable color gradients in image details give us a better understanding of how the technology works and its limitations. As such, finding errors is a process of looking back at ourselves, thinking about the influence and even bias of our subjective choices in constructing our models. Errors should not be unwelcome factors but are learning resources that provide us with the opportunity to reflect on the technology and ourselves.


In terms of how errors can help us reveal hidden technological aspects, the artist Nam June Park's work 'Magnet TV[11]'(Fig.5), is an influential case as an early practice in the digital age. It is an interactive sculpture consisting of a television and a magnet on top. The signals transmitted to the television are disturbed by the magnetic field so that they only appear as distorted abstract wave-like objects on the screen. The subtle electromagnetic signals transmitted within its configuration are highlighted in this work. The noise of the signals that are normally undesirable as interference is revealed as a beautiful abstract pattern, loudly announcing its presence, and a renewed perspective to the audience. We can further see a parallel concept in Carsten Nicolai‘s work crt mgn (2013). It uses multiple mediators such as live camcorders, kinetic magnets, and TV monitors to emphasize more the fluctuations of signals as they are transmitted through different digital mediums and the interferences between them. The idea of these works stems from the mechanical basis of artificial display, but under this amplification of errors, the rational technical process becomes plural, mysterious, and more evocative.


Furthermore, an error is never simply a calm and steady pause. It is a radical change. Like an alarm that presents an unignorable conflict between the entities encountered. It can be seen as the demolition of an existing paradigm, aimed at creating new freedom. ‘There is something going wrong, obviously but it’s really exciting,[12]’ says Alva Noto, an artist with a background in visual art but who later became a digital sound artist. He often uses glitchy sounds and defective elements as the basis for his music. In an interview[13], he mentioned his experience that he did not start with an academic background in music but was an ‘ingenious amateur’ with a sense of ignorance, which made him more daring to try new things. He believes that ‘to use something the wrong way, or in a radically, or turn it upside down’, is very important as it allows new approaches other than the worn-out ones.
 

Artists would always attempt to act differently and ‘wrongly’, in doing so, they establish a new standard, a new expression that is free from the hierarchical system. Writer Tim Barker has studied the Aesthetics of the Error[14], stated that error is positioned as the creative force of the work. It is in this process that the “arthood” of the work is realized. For example, one of the Glitch artists, Visakh Menon, has been exploring the aesthetics of glitch, error, and noise. He potentially prompts the conditions for an error to emerge. Graphic cards, ROM corruption in games, broken LCDs, JPG artefacts are his materials used to generate surprising outputs. It is ‘a veneration of the broken or damaged[15]’, therefore challenging the conventional standard. A similar aesthetic can be seen on a web page called the Glitchbrowser[16](fig.6), where all the user can do is experience errors. When you enter it, it will distort and transform all the images on the page into glitchy patterns. It is weird, but almost enjoyable, to embrace the aesthetics of error through this window.


Such emerging aesthetics represent freedom outside the frame, are ‘happy accidents’ that we should learn to accept. We honour rules and build highly structured and systematic applications. They consist of mathematical calculations and standardized commands that emphasize order, continuity, rationality, stability, and linearity. But in practical use, as a very different way of thinking, human creators find our ability to control is limited. Animator Nikita Diakurs, on the other hand, completely renounces controlling the computer simulation results, and instead exploits and exposes all false outcomes. His film ‘Fest[17]’(fig.7) is a collection of almost all the unpleasant simulations of the 3D software Cinema 4D. The collection of crossed limbs, jiggly indicator lines, terrible physics, and misplaced material mapping shocked us. And in a way, these broken and inaccurate simulations are more powerful and evocative than perfectly rendered CGI graphics.


In conclusion, error, more than normality and correctness, has a valuable role to play, and it should be respected and encouraged. Especially in digital media art, this is expected to be the norm. Through showing accidental results, creating errant outputs, and exploiting the aesthetics of the glitches and chaos, these works are also unveiling for us, layer by layer, the reality beneath the alluring illusion.

---

[1] ‘A Sea of Data: Apophenia and Pattern (Mis-)Recognition - Journal #72 April 2016 - e-Flux’ <https://www.e-flux.com/journal/72/60480/a-sea-of-data-apophenia-and-pattern-mis-recognition/> [accessed 11 March 2022].

[2] Joey Averidge, BEST EXAMPLE OF LIQUID CRYSTAL POLARIZATION, 2015 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa1tqqUjwVU> [accessed 27 March 2022].

[3] Liquid crystal is a substance applied in the manufactures of digital display screen called LCDs, the sensitive feature makes it can react according to various electrical inputs.

[4] Tate, ‘“Liquid Crystal Environment”, Gustav Metzger, 1965, Remade 2005’, Tate<https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/metzger-liquid-crystal-environment-t12160> [accessed 27 March 2022].

[5] Donald A. Norman, ‘The Design of Everyday Things /’ (New York (N.Y.) : Basic books, 2013).

[6] ‘HTTP 404’, Wikipedia, 2022 <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=HTTP_404&oldid=1075184482> [accessed 26 March 2022].

[7] ‘New Museum’ <https://www.newmuseum.org/404> [accessed 26 March 2022].

[8] J. D. Biersdorfer, ‘When Dinosaurs Roam in Chrome’, The New York Times, 14 November 2017, section Technology <https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/14/technology/personaltech/chrome-dinosaur-internet-connection.html> [accessed 26 March 2022].

[9] ‘Postcards from Google Earth | Postcards from Google Earth’ <http://www.postcards-from-google-earth.com/> [accessed 26 March 2022].

[10] Kyle McDonald, ‘How to Recognize Fake AI-Generated Images’, Medium, 2018 <https://kcimc.medium.com/how-to-recognize-fake-ai-generated-images-4d1f6f9a2842> [accessed 26 March 2022].

[11] ‘Nam June Paik | Magnet TV’.

[12] ‘Physicist of Sound | Carsten Nicolai - YouTube’ <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCBIKXFrfNA> [accessed 25 March 2022].

[13] birrein, Slices Issue 4-09 - Alva Noto (1/2), 2010 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi2Xht-EZFg> [accessed 27 March 2022].

[14] Error: Glitch, Noise, and Jam in New Media Cultures (Continuum, 2011) <https://doi.org/10.5040/9781628927924>.

[15] STIR world, ‘Glitch Artist Visakh Menon and the Aesthetics of Failure’ <https://www.stirworld.com/see-features-glitch-artist-visakh-menon-and-the-aesthetics-of-failure> [accessed 11 March 2022].

[16] ‘Glitch Browser | Rhizome’ <https://rhizome.org/editorial/2006/mar/17/glitch-browser/> [accessed 27 March 2022].

[17] ‘Nikita Diakur’s Chaotic Animations Are a Gross Study in Dynamic Computer Simulation’ <https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/nikita-diakurs-ugly-animation-010518> [accessed 25 March 2022].




︎
Wrote by: Ke Peng

Fig.1 youtube video, Best Example Of Liquid Crystal Polarization, 2015



Fig.2 Gustav Metzger, Liquid Crystal Environment, 1965 recreated 2004



Fig.3 New Museum, 404 page



Fig.4 Clement Valla, Postcards from Google Earth, 2012




Fig.5 Nam June Paik, Magnet TV, 1965



Fig.6 Dimitre Lima, Tony Scott and Iman Moradi , Glitchbrowser, 2005



Fig.7 Nikita Diakurs, Fest, 2018