Amalia Lindo's Two Marionettes Collide, is the winner of first prize in our 2022 Digital Art Prize.
A marionette does not exist alone. As algorithms areincreasingly embedded into digital technologies with an intent to measure and model human behaviour, Two Marionettes Collide asks: who is the marionette in an age of networked machines? The video content presented in this film was extracted from the YouTube platform using an automated algorithm to filter videos by calendar date, geographical location, language, and viewcount. The artist, a data scientist, algorithms, and creators of the uploaded videos all have a part in the artwork's resulting assemblage. As a composition generated by human and nonhuman agents, Two Marionettes Collide speaks to the patterns that emerge through user-generated content and its algorithmic circulation while also suggesting new possibilities for aesthetic engagement.
Amalia Lindo (b. 1990, United States) is multi-disciplinary artist based in Narrm/ Melbourne, Australia. She completed a Bachelor of Fine Art (First Class Honours) in 2016 and is a current PhD candidate at MADA, Monash University. Incorporating human and algorithmic decision-making to the practice of filmmaking, her video and installation practice explores the impacts of human-machine interaction as a result of automation. By aggregating video material from social networking and crowdsourcing platforms, her work examines how automated technologies displace human labour by blurring the boundaries between work and consumption.
The Digital Art Prize is a biennial national award for digital art, celebrating contemporary Australian visual art made for the screen. It is presented by Goolugatup Heathcote and the City of Melville. A prize pool of $15,000 is awarded, and the winners are selected by open public vote. The full 2022 finalists are Amalia Lindo (first prize winner), Brenton Alexander Smith, Danae Valenza, Dan Bourke (local prize winner), Gabrielle Brady, Jacobus Capone, Rory Green, and Xanthe Dobbie (second prize winner).
