Teaser workshop endprodukt.wps

Inside Hal 9000, Space Odyssey 2001

In the last workshop I presented in 2010, we discussed the basic of your work, where your creativity
and your ideas are generally come from. In your manifest of creativity, you finished the first part of the
workshop, which was set up as an experiment for you to discover, reflect and understand your work
better .
In the second part of the workshop, we will discover your ideas and your ways of thinking by creating
a abstraction under a “concrete” subject , which I want you to connect with and to be inspired by.
The workshop is called “mistake culture” / the mapping of an interactive system of error and
human being - causes and their effects

Error plays an important part in creativity.

Error is an inevitable result of an experiment. Error points to the progress, it is the result and an
essential proof of evolution.

Error can be the symptom of an artistic idea. Permitting the existence of errors can enrich and
widen your ways of expressing your creativity.
Deviation, error, irregularity are an experiment and provide “art work” with a breath of live.
Art was seen as something perfect and smooth. Spots, cracks and damages were only lately discovered
by artists in order to question their environment they were living in. Confusion and errors are made to
question calculated things. Failure or error may lead to evolution; perfection offers may distinctively
reduce your capacities for improvement.
Example: The discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming
Errors have their own system.
An error was not created by chance and meaningless.
It has a meaningful, comprehensive structure in itself.
Statistics indicate that 75 Percent of errors are based on human errors.

(Regarding the supposed failure of the parabolic antenna on the ship, which HAL
9000 himself falsified)
HAL 9000: It can only be attributable to human error.

An error comes never alone, it comes in a “chains of errors“ and often leads to the collapse of entire
systems leading to a catastrophe such as aircraft crashes ect.

Example for a catastrophe: Titanic, Helius Boeing 755.

Paul Virilio a French thinker, curator and philosopher:
„Art at the end of this century - just one catastrophe. Merciless - just showing the social disaster
without any shame -nothing added“.
„Without the invention of ships there would be no shipwreck, without the invention of a jet plane there
would be no air plain crashes without nuclear power no Tschernobyl accident“.
He sees the accident as a result of speed.

Hanna Ahrendt: „The Progress and catastrophe are 2 sides of a medal.“
Aristoteles: „Only by the accident reality in its authentic substance becomes what it is.“
He thinks the accident is the only release of the substance.

Sigmund Freud: THE PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE (1896)

Technical Systems created by human beings are designed in order to avoid errors!

Self protecting systems, preventive operators
Example: CIRS System, is a system for medical NEAR mistakes to protect patients in the future
against possible errors.
A “near miss Reporting system” of almost accidents.
An accident between knowing and unknowing.
Interviewer: HAL, you have an enormous responsibility on this mission, in many ways perhaps the
greatest responsibility of any single mission element. You are the brain, and central nervous system of
the ship, and your responsibilities include watching over the men in hibernation. Does this ever cause
you any lack of confidence?
HAL: Let me put it this way, Mr. Amor. The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No
9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical
definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error.
In our society exist many highly sophisticated technical systems which have automatic safety devices.
Sometimes our world seems too overprotective and causes a security overkill which leads to the
suppression of natural human self protective mechanisms.
Questions for you to think about:

- What is an error?
- Can you create and abstract the classification of an error?
- Why do errors happen?
- Prepare a classification of an error / mapping
- Prepare a example of „ case of studies“ of chains of errors could be an existing or an invented
analysis!
- Can you describe “chains of errors” and analyze them?
- create an artwork based on accepted errors - a collapse artwork, destroying artwork - negative or
positive!
- Each student of you is requested to give a presentation about errors he/she finds in his/her daily live
or based on examples from the past.

Source: http://transmedians.be/projects_new/files/Workshop-C-Wittig.pdf