The starting point for the performance is an investigation of the stock market - traditionally a place where probability, ritual and intuition collide. Increasingly, it has become the domain of algorithmic approaches, where decisions are made at speeds far beyond human capacity to evaluate or intervene. Eventually the scope of the project will expand to include other aspects of contemporary capitalist culture where algorithms are having an increasingly deterministic effect, where algorithms approach mythic status and shape all manner of relationships, notions of value and thought.
Algorithmyth is an attempt to generate conversation and understanding about how the very contemporary, hi-tech phenomenon of algorithmic programming had seep, historical patterns in human behaviour and cultures. This conversation will include those in the technology sector, those in the arts, and of course, it will be facilitated among our audience. In many ways Algorithmyth is a collaboration: it brings together emerging artists in our region with mid-career artists who work across the country and internally; it brings together artists in creative dialogue with workers in an industry that is transforming the industrial and cultural landscape of this region and the world.
The performance takes the form of a series of exercises exploring the intersection of myth and ritual on an algorithmic scale, that develops physical / rhythmic / musical scores based on myths that are then "lived" through various algorithmic models.