The IDFA DocLab and the Netherlands Film Fund proudly announce the recipients of the 2023 Film Fund DocLab Interactive Grant: Nirit Peled with (this conversation is) Off the record and Constant Dullaart and Piotr Winiewicz with their project William Quail's Pyramid. These pioneering artists have been awarded a financial grant to explore the frontiers of interactive and immersive storytelling, evolving the landscape of digital art and innovation. Both projects critically examine the impact of AI as it emerges and evolves within society, each taking a distinct and unique approach.  

“The committee has decided unanimously. These makers know how to explore socially pressing issues within their projects and bring these investigations to the public in engaging ways. Tantalizing topics brought to the audience in an exciting way: a potentially perfect storm.” – Yiu-loon Lee, Film Consultant at The Netherlands Film Fund 
  

With a total commissioning budget of €20,000 the Film Fund DocLab Interactive Grant supports the development of immersive storytelling in the Netherlands. With this grant, The Netherlands Film Fund and IDFA DocLab aim to promote groundbreaking and experimental use of emerging media and narratives.   

We eagerly anticipate the world premiere of these two outstanding projects at the 36th edition of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, from November 8 to 19, 2023.

About the projects:  

(this conversation is) Off The Record 

In (this conversation is) Off The Record Nirit Peled investigates the profound impact crime prevention algorithms have on the lives of people. This interactive performance lecture builds on Peled’s decade-long research on the consequences of risk-based profiling by the Dutch police, including her documentary Mothers which premiered at IDFA last year. Within the global discourse surrounding algorithmic justice, this latest work delves even deeper into the predictive systems that assess and profile inner city youth, to determine who is likely to commit crimes. In front of a live audience, Peled simulates these algorithm’s workings, as she imagines the city as a collection of streets and buildings, but also as data sets of relationships of people. Can anyone's life truly be captured by data? Who is writing the script that dictates our lives?   

William Quail’s Pyramid 

While our systems are full of faults, Artificial Intelligence has become exponentially better at imitating our language—becoming more articulate and ‘natural’. AI's capacity to effortlessly create original content has been met with awe, as an emissary for an intelligence beyond ours. In the multi-channel video William Quail's Pyramid, Constant Dullaart and Piotr Winiewicz reverse this process and regress language, looking for the glitch and error in language processing. In William Quail’s Pyramid you witness an uncanny séance, birthing the film About a Hero entirely created by an AI that was trained to emulate the mind of documentary filmmaker Werner Herzog. Herzog famously declared that no computer could rival his filmmaking. What is this telling us?   

More information about the artists  

Nirit Peled  
Nirit Peled is an independent filmmaker and writer based in the Netherlands. She weaves stories across multiple media to examine societal structures, both intimate and institutional. Drawing on techniques from journalism and documentary, she investigates the social impact of new technologies, structures of legality, systemic abuses of power, and the nature of violence.   
 

Piotr Winiewicz  
Piotr Winiewicz is a Copenhagen-based, Polish artist, filmmaker and scenographer. He is a graduate from The Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, where his diploma film “On High in White Tomorrows” was awarded the Wurdigung Prize. He is currently working on his feature film “About a Hero”. Winiewicz’s practice oscillates between film, spatial practice and performative arts.   

Constant Dullaart  
Constant Dullaart is an artist based in Amsterdam and Berlin. Exploring how social and cultural values reverberate in tools and technology, he creates works to emphasize an enjoyable friction between old and new, manual and automated, online and offline, real or not. Dullaart is professor Networked Materialities at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Nürnberg.  

The Film Fund DocLab Interactive Grant  

For six years running, The Netherlands Film Fund and IDFA DocLab have joined forces to foster innovative immersive and interactive projects with international potential. Each year, the Film Fund DocLab Interactive Grant has recognized exceptional artists working in the field in the Netherlands. Past award-winners include artists such as Tamara Shogaolu, Studio Moniker, Anna Fries and Malu Peeters, Mathilde Renault and Maarten Isaak de Heer.   

Projects previously supported by this grant have earned acclaim at prestigious venues such as MoMA, SXSW, Sundance, Holland Festival, CPH:Dox, Sheffield DocFest, and many others.   

The realm of immersive and interactive storytelling in the Netherlands has seen a continual surge of creativity and exploration. The Netherlands Film Fund and IDFA DocLab take great pride in nurturing both established and emerging artists, empowering them to push the boundaries of immersive media. By providing an international stage, we invite audiences to traverse various artistic disciplines and embrace groundbreaking exhibition formats.  

Proposals submitted for the IDFA DocLab Open Call for Festival Commissions are evaluated by distinguished experts in the field of documentary and new media. Read more about the selection process here.