The Fields of Algorithms
The One Minutes Series for May and June explores how video games turn us all into directors. 'The Fields of Algorithms', curated by David Blandy, is a mixtape of poetic machinima lasting exactly 60 seconds.
The 23 selected videos were submitted from Cyprus, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, United Arab Emirates, the UK and the USA. Five works were produced in a workshop at Sandberg Instituut - Masters in Art and Design in Amsterdam.
David Blandy will present live, streaming himself on Twitch playing videogames while talking about them and their influence on his art practices and his life. This will be followed by a screening of 'The Fields of Algorithms', and an open discussion with Julia van Mourik (director of The One Minutes Foundation) and artists Benjamin Hall, Alejandra Morote Peralta and Alvaro Bretel, Ali Razzak, Iain Douglas, Adonis Archontides, Andy Nizinskyj, Petra Szemán, and Chris Wicker with the audience through Twitch.
13 May 2021 20:00 - 21:00
The One Minutes: The Fields of Algorithms. Curated by David Blandy.
"When I originally asked for people's poetic machinima, the pandemic was just beginning," says David Blandy. "Since then, the online world has increasingly become part of many people's reality, some discovering the virtual space for the first time, others becoming even more immersed, as outside spaces become gated off. Machinima takes many forms, from the 3D swooping virtual cameras made possible in games like Red Dead Redemption 2 to the bold pixel graphics of early videogames. Video games are often dismissed, but as they become more ubiquitous it's natural that these spaces become a place where we wonder at a vision of nature, or a suitable subject for a poem. Video games turns us all into directors, creating stories with our actions inside these gated realms, both a place for encounters with the sublime and a space to forge community."
As the screening came together, it appeared there were two intertwined themes: politics and personal identity.
"The virtual space is a place to reassess and to reform, both the self, and our vision of society," Blaney explains. "These products of capitalism, vessels of thousands of hours of labour, can become a space for satire and deconstruction, and the space to imagine and enact radical alternatives."
Trailer The Fields of Algorithms, curated by David Blandy for The One Minutes
David Blandy
David Blandy is an artist working with pop-cultural spaces such as video games, tabletop RPGs and Twitch streams. He lives in these worlds in order to think about the stories that create our sense of self, and how these spaces can propose different models for collectivity, either in their narratives or in the cultures that surround them.
Participating artists
Benjamin Hall, Yorgos Papafigos, Tessa Garland, Adonis Archontides and Androula Kafa, Andy Nizinskyj, Lila Catalina Rene Michelle, Peter Martin, Lena Windisch, Jamie Jankovic, Ali Razzak and Peri Heath, Iain Douglas, Petra Szeman, Rene Francis McBrearty, Lila Bullen-Smith, Michelle Mildenberg and Catalina Reyes, Zuzana Banasinska and Noé Cottencin, Chris Wicker, Derk Over, Cesar Majorana, Mylou Oord, Sigrún Sveinsdóttir and Mateo Vega, Seren Lewis, John Powell-Jones, Alejandra Morote Peralta and Alvaro Bretel, Marian Rosa van Bodegraven, Siomara van Bochove, Eva Bosveld, Jeroen Exterkater and Allison Heniquez.
The Fields of Algorithms was made possible by Amsterdams Fund for the Arts, Pictoright Fund and Sandberg Instituut.
The One Minutes
The One Minutes Foundation produces and distributes one-minute videos with an artistic point of view, offering an international stage for people to create, engage and connect. The One Minutes is active at the forefront of international contemporary art, as well as in education and welfare. It has exhibited at venues including Power Station of Art (CN), National Gallery of Iceland in Reykjavík (IS) and Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (USA). Every two months, The One Minutes Foundation puts out a new series of 60-second films that investigate how we perceive and engage with the moving image. Museums and cultural organisations around the world subscribe to the series.
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