Publications

1. Brucker-Cohen, Jonah,“Human Error: Projects That Emphasize “Misuses”
of Technology” Artist Talk”, International Symposium on Electronic Art, (ISEA 2022) , June 2022, Barcelona, Spain.

2. Brucker-Cohen, Jonah,”Human Error, A Collection of Work that Highlights Our
Misuse of Technology and the Internet”, EVA London 2022 ,
London, United Kingdom.

3. Brucker-Cohen, Jonah,”Human Error How Integrating Common Errors Into User Interfaces Can Challenge Our Perceptions and Change Design Thinking”, chapter in Green Revisited. Encountering Emerging Naturecultures in Art and Research Paperback, RIXC, Riga, Latvia, 2022.

Description

“CAPSLCK – human error” is a software work that changes typed text to ALL CAPS. This is an especially common “human error” people make when writing messages such as emails and texts because it creates the illusion that one is “screaming” at the other person through capitalization emphasis. Researcher Maria Heath examined how using caps lock when composing social media posts functions as a “negative strengthener” and how non-standard orthography such as the use of caps lock can be read as both positive and negative tonal outputs by the author. Positive in relaying messages such as “FANTASTIC” or “HOOORAY” and negative as in “GOOD JOB SCREWING UP” as a stand in for shouting. This confusion as well as its subjective interpretation can result in thoughts of “anger” and “yelling” or a general upscaling of the emotive content of the message. Without having control over formatting text as non-caps or ALL CAPS highlights this “human error” and forces the user to rethink both the context and tonal language of their message and begin to change their behavior. 

Below is an example of an email typed using CPSLCK.

“THIS IS AN EMAIL TYPED IN LOWERCASE LETTERS ONLY. CAPSLCK IS A SOFTWARE
ARTWORK THAT AUTOMATICALLY TURNS ALL EMAILS INTO CAPITALS ONLY. THIS CHANGES THE DYNAMIC OF HOW WE CORRESPOND TO EACH OTHER AND FORCES US TO DEAL WITH THIS COMMON “HUMAN ERROR”.