“In order to further understand the event and the way in which an error may slip into existence we may turn to Deleuze’s philosophy of the virtual. This philosophy is not a philosophy of events that actually take place. Rather it is a philosophy of events that could have potentially taken place if things had been different. As DeLanda points out in his commentary on Deleuze, studying the virtual is not an investigation of the events that actually occurred in a system, but rather understanding the system based on the events that could have potentially taken place, if certain circumstances had been different (DeLanda 35). The virtual is the field of potential, the event is the becoming actual of the virtual; it is the actualisation of one event from the multiplicity of the virtual. The virtual that Deleuze theorises is a mode of reality that is articulated in the emergence of new potentials; the virtual is implicated in the reality of change (Massumi). So, in this framework, we can think of the error as the potential that may or may not come into existence. The system that seeks the actualisation of unforeseen potential is thus also a system that has the capacity to become 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). In other words, at any moment, any system that seeks the unforeseen, the novel or the new is involved in the process of actualising potential information. At any moment this system is traversing a field of potential. Within this field exists the virtual error, waiting to be actualised by an errant system. At any point in its process, a system is traversing potential errors and at any point, one may become actualised.
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. 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 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.
Kim Gascone has previously pointed to the artists that exploit this potential for error in order to create what he calls a ‘glitch aesthetic’. Artists such as the composer Ryoji Ikeda, (http://www.ryojiikeda.com/) who create compositions that exploit the inadequacies of the medium, use errors as generative tools. In these instances, artists set up situations in which errors are able to emerge and be exploited in the art making process. In these types of work the artist’s 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. This type of practice is also taken up in the visual arts by Artists such as Tony Scott (http://www.beflix.com/works/glitch.php) who set up situations in which errors are able to emerge and be exploited in the art making process. In these types of work the artist’s 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.”
– from “The Error and the Event” by Tim Barker. Vector e-zine #6, errors and glitches
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