Error 417 Expectation Failed

Error 417 Expectation Failed is an independent foundation supporting radically contemporary Internet art and net-based arts practices. We encourage open-ended formats, risky projects and explorative artworks that engage critically with contemporary technology. Our focus lies on art that addresses the frictions between technology, aesthetics, politics and social relations to challenge power structures – one hack, glitch, fail, error, process and experiment at a time.

Within the framework of the open call "Error 406 [Tech Fascism] Not Acceptable", the following thirteen artistic projects were selected:

NotToday
NotToday is an artistic think-tank created by Sara Martinez and Nicolás Henao-Bonnet. Their work involves research of the far-right radicalization infrastructures and deploys experimental media tactics that blend fiction, sabotage, and symbolic distortion to play with ways of disrupting ideological authority online.

kunsf.xyz
kunsf.xyz is an instrument designer, experimental musician and multimedia artist based in Istanbul. They build sonic worlds through DIY technologies, immersive environments and sculptural interfaces that explore the interactions between bodies, spaces and machines. By blending sound objects, performance, and poetic engagements with technology, their work delves into the intimacy of human-technology relationships and the embodiment of these connections.

The Rojava Center for Democratic Technologies
The Rojava Center for Democratic Technologies is formed by a fluid group of artists and engineers working in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES). It was initiated by artist and cultural critic Dani Ploeger in 2022. Combining art and engineering, and focussing on both 'intermediate technologies' and 'mythological knowledge', the center investigates and develops visions and practices for a postcolonial technological culture that builds on the principles of democratic confederalism, which is is based on decentralized, stateless governance, gender equality, cooperative labour and ecology.

868labs
868labs is a Berlin-based collective developing tactical tools for decentralized, off-grid communication. Initiated by new media artists Helena Nikonole, Katerina Kataeva, and collaborators remaining anonymous, the group’s first prototype – 868Wearables – is a peer-to-peer, open-source communication device enabling encrypted, long-range messaging over the 868 MHz radio band. Designed to be assembled, adapted, and shared, their work challenges commercial infrastructures and invites users to build their own resilient alternatives.

David Huerta
By day, David Huerta helps journalists learn how to utilize privacy-enhancing technology to protect a free press. By night, he creates artistic interventions and workshops which explore alternatives to mass surveillance.

Annika Santhanam
Annika Santhanam is a designer, director, and technologist. Her practice is rooted in humor and curiosity, tackling complex and grim circumstances with carefully designed wayward action, inspired by the constant whiplash of technological advancement. She has exhibited works across the world from the US to Cuba, Germany, and China, and participated in projects with Pixelmouth, The Net Gala, the Ludwig Foundation, Hackers on Planet Earth, and Sonic Liberation Devices.

Alexey Boriskin
Alexey Boriskin is an artist and software developer based in Tbilisi, Georgia, working across video, code, installation and print. Insider experience in large corporate codebases underpins his inquiry into the ethics of algorithmic infrastructures that govern labour, censorship and power.

gabe nascimento
gabe nascimento is a non-binary historian. He has a history degree from the Federal University of São Paulo and is currently a master's student in Federal University of Minas Gerais. Both in his historical research and artistic practices, gabe investigates technologies, particularly computers and digital practices, in multiple aspects such as social, cultural, and political. He debates the tech-mythology for the outskirts that are only true for a small group of people.

El Proyecto Sonidero
El Proyecto Sonidero is a transdisciplinary collective born in 2008 with the aim of recognizing the power of the sonidero movement as a transnational and transcultural platform for expression, experimentation, mediation, participation, and communication for broad sectors of Mexico and Latin America. This is the territory that our work explores in collaboration with the sonidero community and organizations, at the intersection with the cultural, artistic, academic, and governmental fields.

Enkaryon Ang
Enkaryon Ang is a Taipei-based poet and interdisciplinary artist whose practice weaponizes linguistic authenticity against algorithmic extraction. His current project, "Glitch Floods," exploits AI synthesis failures by encoding Taiwan's traditional flood narratives into climate-altered speech patterns that resist technological harvesting.Author of Rorschach Inkblot and A Galaxy of Howness, former UNESCO Prague City of Literature resident and AICA critic, Ang's research spans Sinitic writing systems, Southeast Asian scripts, and colonial legacies—examined through ecological and geopolitical lenses.

Jiawen Uffline
Jiawen Uffline's research focuses on technology as memory and desire, with contaminated history but appearing pure, sterilized, decontextualized and dehistoricized, operating through reducing rather than relating. Jiawen looks into the (counter)history, materiality, poetics and politics of technology. She sees leak as a definite part of the digital reality, and leaking as a method to survive.

permacomputing.net
Permacomputing is both a concept and a community of practice focused on the injustices, harm and climate impact of computation. We develop design principles and facilitate IRL and online exchanges to problematise the techno-optimist, techno-solutionist and techno-fascist mess we're in and how to organise a collective response. Permacomputing is an international collective spread across North-America, Europe and Tasmania, with several satellite groups and communities beyond.

Signals Rising
Signals Rising is a primarily US-based NGO founded to offer free radio hardware and training to marginalized groups and in-particular communities preparing for, or responding to, crises or disasters. Our training participants have included Black and Brown social justice activists in urban settings, Indigenous land defenders in rural areas, and queer femmes leading mutual aid projects along the coast. Both professional and amateur radio communities generally cater to an older, white, male crowd who often create barriers to accessing and practicing skills. We prioritize getting the power of communication back into the hands of QT2SBIPOC community members mobilizing on the ground. By fostering a culture of preparedness and mutual aid we can collectively be resilient to climate disasters and other human-made threats.