Error Message is an installation work comprised of digital audio-visual elements that engage with the aesthetics and methodology of the glitch, aggregated with found sculptural elements comprised of e-waste. The work seeks to explore the underlying materiality of the digital, and the relations of production that constitute and sustain the aura of the digital. The generic desktop landscape wallpaper, given both its ubiquity and its implicit gesture towards a romanticised yet simulated environmental exterior, is employed as an aesthetic and conceptual departure point, as well as the original data-input for these explorations.
A supplementary essay that traces the genealogy of the aesthetics of technological failure in the arts and the notion of the aura of the digital was released as an adjunct to the exhibit and is available online at http://www.richardbkeys.net/errormessage.
