Innovative dance performance explores the relationship between humans and AI
A new performance combining contemporary dance with augmented reality will premiere at the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) as part of this year’s Now or Never festival, presented by the City of Melbourne.
Led by Lecturer in Dance Dr Megan Beckwith, Networked Flesh is a multi-layered, immersive mixed-media performance encompassing film and live performers interacting with augmented reality animation. The work explores ideas including how data shapes representation and how technology mediates what we see as human.
Featuring second-year student dancers from the VCA Dance program, the interactive performance invites participants to move freely through the space and engage with the augmented reality work via a QR code and their phone, as the choreography around them oscillates between the virtual and the physical.
Director and choreographer Dr Megan Beckwith describes the work as an “AI Frankenstein story” that explores the rapidly evolving relationship between human bodies and technology.
“I’d like the audience to question where AI is heading and how it’s increasingly shaping our lives. While making this work, I found myself thinking about: Where are AI agents headed? Will they be living alongside us for the rest of humanity, and what does that mean? And will we still be dancing?”
Megan says she worked with digital dance students using AI in an early development phase of the initial choreographic ideas, feeding motion-capture footage of dancers into an AI system to generate ideas.
“I asked AI to reanimate the material, and it generated bizarre otherworldly results that weren’t humanly possible. I then used those as a starting point for the dancers. Of course, they can't perform those impossible feats where body parts move through each other, or bodies lift off the floor in implausible ways, but I asked them to reinterpret that material, and they came up with genuinely striking movement.”
For Networked Flesh, Megan went through a similar development process with a group of second-year VCA Dance students and collaborator Nicole M.Coera, blending choreographed elements with improvisation.
Second-year dance student Nate Killiby says, “It’s been a really unique experience working with and manipulating generative AI to create ‘human’ movement through our dancing bodies. It’s made me think about how choreographic inspiration can develop and how we can use AI ethically to extend our artistic perspectives.”
Dancer and collaborator Nicole M.Corea says, “I think of technology as my dance partner. It’s sparked my imagination and approach to my relationship with the space around me. Both artists and audiences will walk away feeling inspired by and open to the future possibilities of dance and technology.”
While incorporating AI into dance may seem unorthodox, Megan believes AI can be a useful tool for finding new ways of moving and seeing the world.
“AI has shifted my creative practice because the amount of digital content I can produce in a short amount of time is enormous. I don’t necessarily see AI as a collaborator, but it’s a great tool. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I tend to feel like I’m coaxing content out of it.”
Despite having new tools at her disposal, Megan firmly believes the future of dance will be grounded in the physicality of the human body.
“Even though AI can do all these amazing things, I think we will always return to human-centred experiences. The body is central to how we experience technology and engage with AI. I believe that as AI has an increasing presence in our lives, physicality will become more and more important.”
What can audiences expect when entering Networked Flesh?
"People will walk into a digitally charged, visceral environment awash in pink. Bodies transform from human to hybrid beings, existing across both a live performance space and an extra digital dimension. As the audience interacts with that layer through their own smart devices, the performers respond in real time; flesh and code, dancing as one."