The Minecraft Infinity Project was part of The Software episode of Liverpool Biennial 2016 which pointed towards a broader understanding of technology beyond its practical application. Scripts that ran through the Biennial generated unexpected content and behaviour, creating parallel understandings of art and life. 

The computer game Minecraft allows its users to invent their own world from simple block components, and to interact with the various spheres Minecraft constitutes – the hell-like Nether, for instance, which can only be entered through a smoke-filled portal. 

Taking the Surrealist ‘exquisite corpse’ as inspiration, Minecraft Infinity Project invited players to collaborate with Minecrafters the world over to co-create the largest ever virtual sculpture: a ‘portrait’ of Liverpool Biennial, in which users render their own version of the exhibition and the artworks on show. It also incorporateed a number of artworks by participating artists, such as Oliver Laric’s 3-D scans of sculptures from Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery. The ‘exquisite corpse’ is a way of making things in collaboration with others, where each player adds to what the previous one has created. Players who entered the Minecraft Infinity Project map were able to build using specially created tools that take inspiration from artworks shown at this year’s Liverpool Biennial. Over 14 weeks, players entered the map to fire paintbrushes as if they were arrows, spawning sculptures taken from real-life, and watching as a humongous virtual creation emerges.

Minecraft Infinity Project was developed by Tony Guillan and Adam Clarke, in collaboration with map maker Dragnoz