While scrolling on your smartphone a cosmic ray can strike the Earth’s atmosphere, creating cascades of subatomic
particles including energetic neutrons, muons and pions, beating your screen to create a bitflip, manifesting in a glitchy
phone.
Without realizing it, you have experienced a cosmic ray attack, creating a bitflip in your smartphone. In the future,
cosmic bit flipping will happen more often because processors become smaller and more energy efficient.
For Gazing Bitflips Nuyten started to detect and collect bitflips with a smartphone turned into a pocket detector,
discovering lit pixels caused by cosmic rays on a daily basis. It is a first attempt to get bitflips off the screen, by melting
and solidifying the exact moment of a cosmic strike on a smartphone. The outcome reminds one of a dazzling galaxy; the
home of the cosmic rays.
This new body of work is made of shredded, melted and pressed production waste of Dutch designer Joris Laarman and
e-waste, developed in collaboration with Stefania Petroula and circular company van Plestik.