Does someone who diverges from the norm have a mental disorder? Or can being different give you special skills and talents? Ten years ago visual artist Barry van der Rijt (NL) was diagnosed with ADHD. Exquisite Errors shows that his ‘disorder’ can yield a fascinating project.

Van der Rijt became fascinated by surprising glitches which can occur in digital movie playback. In a timespan of two years he created, obsessively, hundreds of such erroneous images, so called codec errors. By making deliberate distortions in the playback of digital film a series of beautiful ‘deviations’ arose.

In Exquisite Errors he categorized these ‘disorders’, inspired by the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. This manual defines more than three hundred mental disorders and prescribes how to diagnose these. The big difference with the DSM however is that all ‘disorders’ are labeled not negatively but positively.

Van der Rijt makes a powerful statement with his work and puts our view on disorders in a new perspective. He not only embraces the beauty of the ‘disorder’ but also points out its importance.

Exquisite Errors: DMCO-I contains an inventory of over 300 codec orders by Van der Rijt, systematically categorized into 20 typologies, all diagnosed with pointwise descriptions of all relevant characteristics.