Dancing Embryo: Enacting Dance Experience through Human-AI Kinematic Collaboration

Abstract

This article delves into the intersection of dance, human experience, and artificial intelligence (AI), focusing on how AI can engage in dance-like movements through kinematic co-creation with human performers. The study challenges traditional notions of dance, often centered on human physicality and expressiveness, by demonstrating how AI-generated movements can evoke meaningful dance experiences. The project, Dancing Embryo, is a collaboration between a dancer-choreographer and a computational scientist to develop an interactive AI capable of generating and transforming dance movements. Designed using movement data from contemporary dancers, the AI participates in real-time performances, coupling its movement features with those of a human dancer. This work broadens the definition of dance to include non-human agents and emphasizes the possibilities of co-creation between humans and machines. The article explores the technological, ontological, and artistic implications of dancing with AI, proposing that the dance experience can be perceived and completed through human interpretation, even when performed by a machine.