Dadaist Filmmaking
Re-editing the readymade film
This workshop explores filmmaking as algorithmic assembly, where hyperlogical and absurdist rules replace traditional narrative structure.
You’ll collaborate to build a shared corpus of video sourced from archives, screen recordings, AI-generated footage, and whatever else you find or make. These clips are then tagged using various AI tools and algorithms: content descriptions, color palettes, audio transcripts, visual embeddings. The metadata is our editing vocabulary.
We will then resequence clips according to constraints that ignore traditional continuity. Match shots by dominant color. Sequence by audio similarity. Let visual embeddings determine what comes next. These non-narrative sequences reveal new structures and ideas.
You’ll leave Dadaist Filmmaking with a number of short films and new approaches to apply to your own practice. No previous filmmaking experience is required.
Workshop lead
Derrick Schultz is a post-AI artist, filmmaker, and educator. Utilizing machine learning and other computational techniques, his work explores generative abstraction and algorithmic filmmaking. He has produced work for The New York Times, The New Yorker, and more. Derrick was the Lead Creative Technologist on Ho Tzu Nyen’s Phantoms of Endless Day, an endlessly shifting generative AI film re-envisioning the artist’s previously incomplete film. He is a product lead at Titles, helping artists train AI models on their work, maintaining attribution to their original works while allowing a community of creators to explore the artist’s unique style.
Fig. 01 — Still from Scream Scenes Day 19: The Scream, Derrick Schultz