Dancers learn routines from an algorithm and we get a fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpse of K-pop choreography as the Place’s festival moves online
One of the many festivals that’s switched to digital this year, the Place’s Korean dance showcase gives eclectic insights into South Korea’s thriving contemporary dance scene. The only full performance included (and it’s just 20 minutes) is Shin Changho’s Beyond Black, for Korea National Contemporary Dance Company. It’s as much a philosophical proposition as a piece of dance. The question: could AI create dance as well as humans can? Decades ago, Merce Cunningham was using computer programs to generate choreography, so it’s a fair guess the answer is yes.
Currently AI can choreograph only by “learning” movement from humans – although that will apparently change by 2045 when computer intelligence surpasses all human learning and the robots take over. In the meantime, AI program Madi “watches” Shin’s dancers and translates their joints and limbs into dots and lines, then extrapolates the algorithms to generate infinite ways to “place dots and lines in unique patterns”, some of which the dancers relearned from the computer to perform in Beyond Black. You wouldn’t know the movement’s origin, although you could find something quirkily robotic in its isolations, like signals being sent to different limbs in turn, but there’s nothing mechanical about its rough-edged, human performance. Whether people or machines create the steps, it’s the humans dancing, and watching, who make the meaning.