THE MUSEUM OF FAILURES

SUMMARY

THE MUSEUM OF FAILURES (STATEMENT)
THE MUSEUM OF FAILURES (CLASSIFICATION)
THE MUSEUM OF FAILURES (GROUND BREAKING CEREMONY)
THE MUSEUM OF FAILURES (BOOK)
THE MUSEUM OF FAILURES (FILE CABINETS)
THE MUSEUM OF FAILURES (WORKSHOPS)

THE MUSEUM OF FAILURES (STATEMENT)

« This acknowledgement of powerlessness before the upsurge of unexpected, catastrophic events forces us to reverse the usual trend which exposes us to accidents and inaugurate a new kind of museology and museography: one which consists in exposing or exhibiting the accident, all accidents, from the most commonplace to the most tragic, from natural catastrophes to industrial and scientific disasters, including also the kind that is too often neglected, the happy accident, the stroke of luck, the coup de foudre or even the coup de grâce! » — Paul Virilio

Progress, innovation and linear growth are cornerstones of our contemporary economies, social systems, even personal faith and belief. The very prevalence of these models and values requires that we unearth, create and circulate alternative, counter-narrative and parallel accounts. Technological development is often recounted as the exploitation and instrumentalisation of heroic moments and individuals, ignoring the long shadow of aborted projects, flops, errors, malfunctions, ethical disavowals and disasters. The Museum of Failures is a contributive museum, dedicated to the excavation and dissemination of the dark and underrepresented narratives about technology.

CONCEPTION: DISNOVATION.ORG
VARIOUS CONTRIBUTORS (HEAD GENEVA, IXDM BASEL...)
WORKSHOPS, PERFORMANCES, DATABASE - INSTALLATIONS | 2015-ongoing...

Press release for the event co-organized with IXDM Basel:
Functional Failures, Operative Fakes and Tenuous Techniques

THE MUSEUM OF FAILURES / CLASSIFICATION

FLOORS AND ROOMS (in progress)
The most representative perspectives on technological failures are formalised as floors of this fictional Museum. Inside these floors the sub-topics, composed as collection of items on a given issue, are formalised as rooms.

FLOORS

ROOMS

Some of the rooms proposed to ERRORS /ARS Electronica 2018 (Rejected!)
Curated topics and existing research by various artists and academic contributors.

– Technological Disasters
– Existential Risks
– The Dead Media
– The Museum of Failed Startups
– Technological Flops
– Alternatives to the Singularity
– Failed Patents and Inventions
– Apocryphal Technologies
– Algorithmic Trading Failures
– Algorithmic Failures & glitches
– Collection of Malware and Viruses
– Museum of Video Game Bugs & Failures
– Inventors Killed By Their Own Inventions
– Patents Still Pending
– History of Computer Glitches & Bugs
– Collection of web 404 pages
– IOT Failures (Internet of shit)
– Paleo-energetics (forgotten energy inventions)
– Hall of Shame
– Failed Techno-Utopian City-planning
– Soviet Space Dogs
– Failed Alternative Currencies
– Artificial Intelligence Failures
- ...

THE MUSEUM OF FAILURES - GROUND BREAKING CEREMONY

Performance, HeK, Basel, CH 2017

THE MUSEUM OF FAILURES - BOOK

A contributive database, & a book in progress, 2015-2020...

THE MUSEUM OF FAILURES - FILE-CABINET

Solo exhibition DISNOVATION.ORG, Mapping Festival, Geneva, CH 2017

THE MUSEUM OF FAILURES - WORKSHOPS

Poster of "Functional Failures, Operative Fakes and Tenuous Techniques", designed by Moritz Greiner-Petter

The Workshop "Functional Failures, Operative Fakes & Tenuous Techniques" was initiated by Critical Media Lab & Disnovation.org, and was held in collaboration with AMT, and Nicolas Nova of the Near Future Laboratory.

Exhibited at:

HeK, Basel, CH 2017
Workshop @ Critical Media Lab, Basel, CH 2017
Mapping Festival, Geneva, CH 2017
Workshop @ Head, Geneva, CH 2017

Press:

Functional Failures, Operative Fakes and Tenuous Techniques by Bruce Sterling, WIRED, September 30, 2017