Dysfunction in the Networks of Machinic Assemblage

Abstract

The field of art education has not looked closely at the dynamics of failure with regard to digital technologies, beyond describing ways to avoid technical glitches so that the smooth space of education is not disturbed. The notion of the machinic assemblage as theorized by Deleuze and Guattari offers art educators a diagram for failure that displaces utopian narratives. The machinic assemblage has the potential to disrupt the narrative of efficiency central to modernist ways of teaching, thinking, and being; a study of technological failure as approached by new media artists would reveal the possibilities for productive, even radical applications of the digital, while at the same time potentially identifying the limits of applicability. Technologies fail. They are sometimes built to fail, whether as a guard against further damage, as in the case of the circuit breaker, or due to the marketplace, in the case of planned obsolescence. There are many types of failure associ ated with digital technologies: hardware malfunctions, software errors, human ineptitude. This paper will explore the diagram of the machinic assemblage as theorized by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (1977) as it is related to failure in digital technological systems. The machinic assemblage can introduce a level of dysfunctionality into the understanding of how digital technologies operate within the interstices of embodiment and affect. Through new media artists who employ dysfunctionality through the motifs of overload and failure, art educators may find opportunities to explore new modes of technological interface and artistic production.