Soft Error: Inside Pink Schatzkammer of Digital Memory
The ACCOMPART’S curation, Soft Error. A Metamorphosis Chapter, presented at Art on Tezos: Berlin, was a deliberate and striking departure from conventional curation.
Installation images of the ACCOMPART’S curation
Rejecting the white cube, the curators Von Doyle and Yana Kuzmina assembled an immersive pink Schatzkammer filled from floor to ceiling with both digital and physical works by twenty-one different artists (watch the walkthrough and conversation here). This sensory-dense, pink environment creates a curatorial paradox. At first glance, the installation might appear overwhelmingly chaotic, rather accumulated than curated. Yet, this intentional visual noise is the very argument. Curators framed this chaos as the physical manifestation of the Soft Error thesis: a shrine to data overload, digital glitches, and the instability of memory in the post-digital age.
SOFT ERROR A by Von Doyle (2025)
One of the curation’s central series is SOFT ERROR by Von Doyle. A full alphabet of looping GIF sequences with an opening video work ERROR A that morphs Rogier van der Weyden's Portrait of a Lady and subjecting her to a relentless cycle of AI reanimation and flickering. Her initial calm elegance, which shortly spirals into screaming madness, serves as a tragic mask for an inescapable, repeating reality. This cycle embodies the series’ conceptual bedrock: the SOFT ERROR, a subtle system fault that flips information without crashing the entire structure, thereby shifting meaning without outright destruction.
The series’ subsequent GIF sequences, ranging from ERROR B to ERROR Z, follow the same foundational principle. They recompose figures from famous historical paintings into playful, flickering sequences. These works function as reverberations of the initial alpha piece, demonstrating how one foundational technical error can propagate across an entire library of cultural memory.
The Algorithmic - embodied instability by objektpermanenz (2025)
Another compelling series in the curation is embodied instability by objektpermanenz, which deconstructs identity and heritage. Three minted video loops reflect the artist's interest in projecting identity onto code. It addresses the moment the system mirrors us back, resulting in a profound “distortion of self—a proposition rather than mere simulation.” Moving beyond cultural memory’s instability, the work explores how the relentless digital feedback loop warps the body and psyche. This persistent, ritualistic glitching creates a contaminated image, a fundamental, flawed suggestion of who we are, irrevocably scarred by technology’s soft error.
Touch Grass Diptych - The Whole Thing by Scorpion Dagger (2025)
While Objektpermanenz examines the fragility of the post-digital body, Scorpion Dagger offers a playful take on disrupted historical memory. In his Touch Grass Diptych series, he reimagines Renaissance figures escaping their original canvases to live modern lives. The final part of the series is a 5/5 NFT edition, available exclusively to collectors who collect both its right and left sides. The right side depicts figures in a “posh city block” needing to “touch grass,” while the left shows figures enjoying nature. The complete Touch Grass Diptych brilliantly leverages the blockchain medium to construct different tiers within a single series. It bridges historical relevance of a diptych as medium while simultaneously amplifying the work’s post-digital commentary by splitting one final NFT edition into two subsidiary editions.
Caption 01010111 01100001 01110010 by Adam Disrow (2025) (Still from GIF)
No digital art curation would be complete without referencing the binary system. A role filled by Adam Disrow’s signature 1/1 contribution, 01010111 01100001 01110010. The title, binary for War, transforms language itself into a conceptual battlefield, exploring the tension between signal and silence, creation and destruction.
The ACCOMPART’S presented a strong selection of works relevant to a post-digital age, raising crucial questions about digital memory, identity, and culture. To preserve our digital culture, we may need to archive it physically to prevent it from becoming a victim of Soft Error.