Unknown Error (11'12', 2025)
WALL LABEL //
A cascade of digital glitches inspires Demelza to transform technological failure into a video installation. The result is an homage to ten unique errors, functioning simultaneously as a celebration of chance and a eulogy for the loss of the physical world.
WHAT //
Outdoor, single channel video installation with stereo sound.
CATALOGUE NOTE //
Demelza turns a series of accidental digital errors into a video installation. Attempting to digitise a hand-drawn ink drawing, she encountered software malfunctions that produced abstract compositions reminiscent of early Modernist and Postmodern Abstract Art.
Yet, these images are not made as art: there is no intention, no prompt, only error. Their status depends on recognition, which raises the question of where authorship lies, in the machine, the accident, or the artist who names them?
The visuals are paired with the experimental electronic music of Oetzi, whose practice of deliberate sonic degradation mirrors the video's visual glitches. Together, image and sound form an audiovisual poem that is at once a celebration of unpredictability and a wordless reflection on the vanishing physical world.
CREDITS //
Art Concept – Demelza Kooij
Music – Oetzi
Made during the Il Gattopardo residency in Cairo Montenotte, Italy in Sep-Oct 2025. Il Gattopardo residency
BACKSTORY //
In trying to digitise a hand-drawn ink image, Demelza found herself pestered by digital glitches. First, her payment for Photoshop was declined. Irritated, she opened the software anyway, noticing that it had already been downloaded from the cloud. Although she didn't pay, she was pleased to find that she was able to use the software nevertheless.
Encouraged by this initial success she pressed on, only to encounter further issues: repeated warnings that her scratch disk was full and difficulties with rescaling. Since the faulty payment had already worked in her favour, Demelza dismissed these messages too and tried exporting the cleaned-up image.
This is when she received the message An Unknown Error Occurred and found herself staring at luminous, accidental compositions reminding her of early Modernist and Postmodern Abstract Art.
Delighted to have generated an error so enigmatic that neither the computer nor the software could classify, Demelza created a video installation in honour of these digital mishaps. The result is an audiovisual poem that is both a celebration of her victory over the digital realm as well as a eulogy for the loss of the physical world.
The work also opens broader questions of authorship today. The computer produces the image, but without intention or reference as there was no prompt. It becomes art only when Demelza names it as such and the viewer recognises it.
Demelza paired the visual compositions with the electronic music of Oetzi, a composer based in Scotland. Just as her images embrace visual glitches, Oetzi experiments with deliberately degrading sounds, layering distortion, and incorporating digital clipping and scratching in pursuit of the boundary between noise and music.
