Error and knowledge production: productive tensions at the intersection of art and science

This paper explores the productive role of error in knowledge production, particularly in the context of art-science collaborations, and proposes methodologies which creatively leverage error as a tool for interdisciplinary exploration. Spaces at the edges of disciplines or in-between disciplines – emergent “error-prone spaces” where established knowledges and practices falter – are identified as particularly fruitful sites for experimentation and exchange. In these contexts, this paper explores the intentional misuse of scientific tools and technologies as a productive methodological approach to research for interdisciplinary and postdisciplinary work. The paper opens by drawing on historical and philosophical perspectives which position error not as a failure or deviation but as a generative condition of inquiry across both the arts and sciences. The following sections then develop these ideas in more concrete terms, through the analysis of four experimental art-science projects which rely on undisciplined uses of technology and creative relationships to error to chart new connections between disciplines: from decolonial approaches to cartography, to novel intersections of art with aerospace technology, astrophysics, and geophysics, respectively. The paper concludes by identifying potential methodological takeaways for interdisciplinary knowledge creation more broadly, focusing on experimental approaches to technologies that allow for the discovery of new ways of working together.