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 they approach mythic status and shape all manner of relationships, notions of value and thought.
Andy Houston feels this project is very relevant to Waterloo Region:
In the past two decades, Waterloo Region has become known as Canada’s next version of a “Silicon Valley of the North” or as the cities of Kitchener, Waterloo, and Cambridge are sometimes called: “Canada’s Technology Triangle”. In our region there are over 12,000 businesses devoted to the tech sector, including internationally known companies such as Christie, Blackberry, ComDev, and OpenText.
In many ways this industry is the new industrial culture in our region, so as artists we aim to create work that will engage in meaningful dialogue with this emerging culture. Algorithmyth is an attempt to generate conversation and understanding about how the very contemporary, hi-tech phenomenon of algorithmic programming has deep, historical patterns in human behaviour and cultures. This conversation will include those in the tech sector, those in the arts, and of course, it will be facilitated among our audience. In many ways this project is a collaboration: it brings together emerging artists in our region with mid-career artists who work across the country and internationally; 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.
The workshop performance takes place Wednesday, September 3rd at 7 p.m. in Room 0101 in the Mike and Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum-Nano Centre. Other collaborators are:
- Composer - Peter Hatch
- Writer - Adam Cowart
- Soundscaping - Colin Labadie
- Performers: Pam Patel, Margaret Bardos, Richard Burrows, Daniel Morphy, Mukul Agarwal, Kathryn Ladano