QUALIA

QUALIA and the MIND MACHINE Regardless of whether analog or digital systems are used to generate or modulate glitches, their ultimate point of execution remains the human “wetware” system—the brain, perception, and consciousness. The crucial question is therefore: Can a system or a work of art be developed that not only causes media surfaces to glitch, but also puts the human perceptual system itself into a state of “glitch”? This is precisely where the idea of the Mind Machine comes in. In a situation of self-exposure—in an unfamiliar environment, in contact with strangers, in a state of heightened attention and simultaneous irritation—a space of possibility emerges in which such “mind glitches” can not only be represented but also made tangible. The medium becomes secondary in this process. What is decisive is the configuration of conditions: sensory irritation (light, flicker, rhythm, repetition) cognitive overload or underload social displacement (strangeness, closeness, uncertainty) temporal desynchronization minimal deviations from systems of expectation The artwork would thus no longer be an object, but a dispositif that deliberately generates differences in perception—small disruptions in the continuum of experience. A “Mind Glitch” would then not be an error, but a moment in which the coherence of perception becomes visible, precisely because it temporarily breaks down.