Hello to all members of the Dance-tech.net family and enthusiasts of the digital dance realm,
As we look back on the remarkable journey that Dance-tech.net has undertaken since its inception in October 2007, it's thrilling to consider the path that lies ahead. Born from a vision to blend the realms of dance, technology, and digital culture, Dance-tech.net has grown into a vibrant community of artists, technologists, and scholars who share a passion for pushing the boundaries of what's possible in art and technology.
A Vision Expanded
Dance-tech.net has always been more than a platform; it's a living, breathing ecosystem that thrives on collaboration, innovation, and exploration. Our mission has led us to foster an environment where new ideas can flourish, where the intersection of movement and technology sparks creative fires.
Our Supportive Partners
As we embark on this next chapter, we're excited to announce the support of key partners who share our commitment to innovation and education in the realms of dance and technology. Lake Studios Berlin (lakestudiosberlin.com) continues to be a steadfast supporter, providing a space where artists and technologists can converge and create.
Radiona (radiona.org), with its dedication to open community and innovation, aligns with our vision of a collaborative future.
Furthermore, we're establishing special educational partnerships with leading organizations in the AI space: Hugging Face (huggingface.co) and Fal.ai (fal.ai/dashboard). These collaborations are set to enrich our community's understanding and application of AI in dance and performance, marking a significant leap forward in our collective exploration of digital technology.
Looking Forward
This next phase for Dance-tech.net is not just about growth; it's about deepening our engagement with the digital world and its potential to transform dance and artistic expression. We are standing at the threshold of a new era, ready to explore the possibilities of movement, embodiment, cognition and digital technology with a special focus on AI's role in redefining these domains.
An Invitation to Explore | Helps us with new directions...
This journey would not be possible without you, our community. Your curiosity, passion, and creativity have been the driving force behind Dance-tech.net's evolution. As we move forward, I invite you to join us in this exciting new phase. Let's continue to challenge the boundaries of dance and technology, together. Let me know in the comments how do you feel about these new and how can we reacticate the community and these exciying filed of inquiry.
Warm regards,
Marlon Barrios Solano Curator | Dance-tech.net and Movimiento.org
This is the unseeable space in which machine learning makes its meaning. Beyond that which we are incapable of visualizing is that which we are incapable of even understanding. — James Bridle
Latent space, in the realm of machine learning and artificial intelligence, refers to a high-dimensional abstract space where data’s intrinsic, hidden features are represented in a compressed form. This space is particularly significant in the context of generative models, such as Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) and transformers, where it serves as the groundwork for the models to learn, encode, and manipulate the underlying patterns of the data they’re trained on. By navigating through this latent space, these models can generate new instances of data that, while reflective of the learned patterns, are distinct and original.
In “Duets in Latent Space,” embodies a live collaboration between the artist or user— situated before a laptop — and generative AI models that reside within this enigmatic latent space. Through various forms of input, whether they be movements, sounds, or digital interactions, the AI responds in kind, generating visual, auditory, or textual outputs that are played back in real time.
In “Duets in Latent Spaces,” I navigate different trajectories in the domain where machine learning finds its meaning inspired by James Bridle’s contemplation on locating these spaces beyond our capacity to visualize or understand.
“Duets in Latent Spaces” is conceptualized as a lecture-performance, installation and webpages, designed to bridge the realms of the tangible, the remembered and the speculative, facilitating presentations both in person and online.
This project unfolds through a series of vignettes combining stories, re-tellings, interfaces, software, movement scores and re-performances, each spanning 3 to 7 minutes, that illuminate trajectories of the generative potential of human-AI interaction, inviting the audience into a collaborative narrative that melds human intuition, storytelling with algorithmic playfulness.
Each segment is woven with personal stories, dances, histories about cybernetics, migration, post-coloniality and choreographic thinking. They venture into uncharted probability spaces, powered by bespoke applications I’ve developed to interface with advanced generative AI models and machine learning models for body and gesture recognition.
These interactions forge semantic and action landscapes that delve into the deep, unseen dimensions of data, cultural memory and language. By reversing the hegemonic narratives of generative AI and manipulating inputs, actions, and prompts, I navigate the AI models’ generative processes exploring their emancipatory potential, forging unique cognitive recombinations with evolving texts, images, and soundscapes set within the ethereal spaces of desire, affect, memory, longing and hybrid materiality.
Central to this project are several technologies: p5.js, enabling creative coding in the browser; Next.js, for rendering server-side React applications; machine learning models for hangs gesture and body movement recognition; humansLarge Language Models (LLMs), offering extensive capabilities for generating human-like text; and Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), known for producing highly realistic images. These technologies underpin the performance, emphasizing REAL-TIME dynamic interactions that highlight the creative and epistemic challenges of generative AI.
Moreover, “Duets in Latent Spaces” extends beyond the performance realm into live, interactive applications, making the underlying technology directly accessible. The apps themselves, alongside their source code, are freely available, inviting further exploration and engagement from the audience and the broader community. This transparency aims to demystify the technology, encouraging a hands-on understanding and critical examination of AI’s role in shaping our perceptions of identity, creativity, and reality.
This project and each node is a mutable invitation to ponder the unseen forces that mold our digital and physical existence (as memory and imagination), offering a nuanced perspective on the intricate relationship between human cognition and artificial intelligence. Through this work, I challenge audiences to reflect on the invisible dimensions that influence our world, inhabiting the gap between the known and the unknowable latent space of entropic creativity.
It has been presented at:
-. Generative AI, Arts and Ethics, think-tank at Chateau de Fey, France March 5th of March 2024.
-. ACCAD Future Tech | The Ohio Stare University OSU Dance (Online) February 22nd 2024
-. Unfinished Fridays @ Berlin Lake Studios February 23rd 2024.
It can be adapted to be presented as installation-performances, installations, online apps and as line and online lecture-performance.
Call for professional choreographers, dance companies and directors who want to participate in the Video Dance Showcase, to be held in Almada - Portugal, between September 19 to October 6, 2024.
The Video Dance Showcase is a section of the Quinzena de Dança de Almada - International Dance Festival, this year in the 32nd edition.
- The organisation will assure the conditions for the presentation of the selected pieces, being responsible for the programming and promotion of the presentations.
- The organisation will provide space and technical conditions for the presentation of selected videos.
- The organisation will be allowed to record and photograph the event and use excerpts of the pieces for promotion, archive, and educational purposes.
- The organisation will choose the location and time of presentation, within the duration of the festival.
- The authors are invited to attend the screening and participate in the presentation if they have the possibility to be present.
The submitted proposals must be:
- Works of Video Dance with a duration of 8 minutes or less.
- Presented by video directors, choreographers, dance companies or other institutions that hold the rights of presentation (proof of author's permission for presentation in the festival must be sent if the application is approved).
Inspired by Nahuel: Marlon Barrios Solano delves into generative design and human-computer interaction at Lake Studio Berlin, inspired by Nahuel Gerth's innovative approaches. Read more
Meta-fictions: Entangled with Odd Kins: Reflect on the interplay between dance, AI, and narrative in Marlon Barrios Solano's latest project, showcasing unpredictable artistic evolution. Explore further
Unfinished Fridays #106: Don't miss a unique evening at Lake Studios Berlin on February 23rd, 2024, featuring new works by resident artists and special guests. Details here
Sacred Economics (2019 Remix): Engage with Charles Eisenstein's ideas on transforming our economic systems towards sustainability, presented in a thought-provoking remix. Watch now
Poetics of Encryption Exhibition 24: Visit KW Institute for Contemporary Art from February 17 to May 26, 2024, for an exhibition exploring digital tools, secrecy, and the cultural implications of technology through the work of over 40 international artists. Learn more
Stay informed and inspired with this week's selection of engaging events and exhibitions!
Immersing myself in this residency at Lake Studio Berlin, I have been inpired by the young designer and creative coder Nahuel Gerth. Based in Prague, he is not just a designer, but a visual storyteller, playfully weaving together the threads of science, arts, technology, with the laguage and tools of generative design. I am inspired by his passion for innovation and playfullness, while exploring the boundaries of human-computer interaction and design.
Nahuel, plays with form, code, and emboiment. He uses procesural design for the web as a medium of art and playfully expands interaction with elegamt design. Visit Nahuel's Website and follow his journey on Instagram @NahuelGerth.
🖌️ Contrast and Identity 🖌️
One facet of Nahuel's work that profoundly resonates with me is the stark contrast it presents between the materiality of emboiment and slick graphic dynamic 2D design. He juxtaposes algorythmic design with the material reality of embodiment. This interplay between Nahuel's digital geometies and my corporeal existence creats a compelling narrative tension.
t Lake Studio Berlin, my residency immerses me in a world where art and technology seamlessly blend to create a new frontier of expression. Armed with tools like p5.js and MediaPipe, coupled with the flexibility of web-based platforms, I sculpt interactive, generative environments that transcend traditional boundaries. These digital dances, born from code and creativity, exist as fluid experiences accessible to all, embodying the inclusive spirit of open-source technology.
Through my exploration, I strive to foster collaboration and inclusivity within the artistic community. Every keystroke and algorithmic tweak represents not just artistic creation, but also a commitment to sharing knowledge and insights. The LapTop Dances Prototype, a culmination of concept, programming, and performance, serves as a tangible manifestation of this ethos.
As I delve into realms of creative coding, machine learning, and generative AI, both in text and image, I anticipate the evolution of participatory performances that blur the lines between the digital and physical realms. Stay tuned for updates as I unveil the results of this exploration within the Laptop Dances | Soft Spaces project.
Reflecting on the culmination of our residency at Lake Studios Berlin in November 20th 2023, “Meta-fictions: A Fugue entangled with several odd kins and intelligences” represents a significant milestone in my journey exploring the realms of generativity, dance, and AI. This performance was not just the result of collaborative efforts but also a testament to the boundless possibilities that arise when different worlds of creativity and technology intersect.
Throughout the residency, my focus was on leveraging the capabilities of generative AI, to create an innovative choreographic tool also inrelation with the history of the use of rule systems and improvisational structures by dancers and actors. We iengaged in a dynamic dialogue with AI. We created a generative loop of continuous improvisation in collaborations with AIs. This process illustrated the true essence of generativity — an evolving, unpredictable artistic expression.
In “Meta-fictions,” we delved into the realm of self-aware storytelling. The performance was a conscious blend of fiction and reality, constantly evolving and reshaping itself based on the interactions between the dancers, AI, and the audience. This approach allowed us to explore the narrative in a way that questioned and played with the very nature of storytelling in the digital age. We collaborated and performed with fabulation engines.
A key aspect of the residency’s outcome was its rich tapestry of cultural influences due to our nationalities and complex histories: Venezuela, Mexico and Spain. From ancient indigenous chants to the modern rhythms of Spanish pop and American hits, the musical landscape of the performance was diverse and vibrant. The inclusion of Miguel Bose’s iconic performance in drag from Almodovar’s “Tacones Lejanos” brought an element of cinematic flair, merging music, film, and dance. The movements, inspired by the dramatic essence of bullfighting, connected our digital creation with deep-rooted cultural expressions. Longings, belongings and exiles were present.
In this project, AI took on multiple roles — as a repository of memories, a source of imagination, an evidence of cultural mashup and as collaging unique worlds. Durinf the process, AI-generated visuals of ethereal forms of jellyfish and algae, were not just artistic elements but symbolized the blending of the natural and digital realms, hight art conceptuality and fantasize about alien rituals. These OddKins represented the symbiosis of life forms. We watched Donna Haraway documentary and also sang karaoke. Working with LLMs is going meta all the time.
As I look back on “Meta-fictions,” I see it as an exploration in the field of performance art and installation. It’s a vivid example of how computation and AI happens is time and time happened in semantic realms. This residency at Lake Studios Berlin was an opportunity to navigate the uncharted (yet familiar) waters of generativity, AI, and dance improvisation. Stuff that changes in real-time.
Thanks to the artists collaborators in this residency Dakota Comin, Cesar Rene Perez, and Vera Rivas and the support of Lake Studios Berlin.
All images are from Maria Kousi and were taken in November 17th 2023.
Sati-AI is not intended to be a monolithic knowledge base on Buddhist meditation practice and theory, instead, it is designed to embody and augment my interdisciplinary research path in relation to my Vipassana meditation practice. My art and research traverses cognitive science, dance improvisation and choreography, contemplative practices, art and technology and software development. In Sati-AI, early buddhist knowledge is an attractor. Sati-AI is imagined as an embodiment of the distributed, uncertain, and queer condition of not having a center, a rigor necessitated by the state of knowing not knowing. Sa
Read more…
Following Quinzena de Dança de Almada’s organisation as a space for the presentation and sharing of experiences between contemporary dance artists, we are inviting choreographers, dance companies and professional directors to submit their projects for presentation on the International Platform for Choreographers and/or on the Video Dance Showcase.
The 31st edition of Quinzena de Dança de Almada - International Dance Festival will be presented in Almada (Lisbon, Portugal), from September 21 to October 8, 2023.
Interested parties can submit their proposals until January 22, 2023, for the International Platform for Choreographers and April 9, 2023, for the Video Dance Showcase. Conditions and online forms are available here.
For any question, please feel free to contact us via quinzena@cdanca-almada.pt.
Hello all, here is the link to the Soma Session Thursday, September 8.Reyna J. Perdomo is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting. Topic; Soma Session 3 with Reyna Description; GYROKINESIS® Method and Embodied-Balanced-Flow Body/Mind Training with Reyna. Time: Sep 8, 2022 01:00 PM Caracas, 1 PM EST., 7 PM CET.
MotionDAO, an artists collective exploring the affordances of the blockchain for movement and inter-disciplinary artists.
We have been meeting, thinking and creating experiments and we have now the opportunity to meet and share our experience in Kassel Germany during Documenta 15th.
To receive the zoom link please leave a comment in this post!
Session Description:
Sati: The Practice of Mindful Awareness
We will explore the potency of embodied awareness: ‘bodyfulness’ as a reframing of the four foundations of Mindfulness (Satipathana) as presented by early buddhism. We will practice Sati in combination with contemporary practices influenced by embodied cognition and somatics. The sessions start with guided mindfulness practice, silence and unfolds to a council/dialogue practice.
My Bio:
Marlon Barrios Solano is a Venezuelan-American interdisciplinary artist, educator and researcher based between the US and Europe. With a hybrid background in movement arts, performance/dance studies, software engineering and psychology, he investigates the intersections of socio-technical systems, embodied cognition, choreography, computation, networks, somatic awareness and social innovation in art, pedagogy and healing. He is fascinated by software, complexity and culture.
He is a Certified Vipassana/Mindfulness Meditation Teacher by Spirit Rock Meditation Center (USA) and practices under the mentorship of Stephen Batchelor. He is a student of the Somatic Experiencing Certification Program (NYC) and he is an Embodyoga® 200 Hour Teacher (RYT200). From 2016 to 2021, he worked and lived at Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA in the US.He teachers mindfulness meditation to artists, technologists and creative professionals.
As a dancer in NYC, he collaborated with New York choreographers Lynn Shapiro, Merian Soto, Dean Moss and Susan Marshall and with musicians Philip Glass, John Zorn and Erik Friedlander. He holds an MFA in Dance and Technology 2004 intersecting networked environments, performance of improvisation and embodied cognition from The Ohio State University, USA.
I have been hosting an Embodied Writing Session along with Lauren Tietz. We would like to invite any dancer/embodied practitioners who are interested in embodied writing practices to join us. The sessions are led by whoever wants to share their practice or experiment with practice. Sessions are held via Zoom.
I will share zoom links on here. The dates and times are not "consistent", but we have been meeting Mondays sometimes around 10am CST or 2pm CST.
You can message me or reply here if you are interested.
We are also gathering a knowledge bank and a writing archives for some kind of publication (live, hard copy, digital, NFT).
The GitCoin organization matches your donation using an algorithm that favors the amount of donations/supporters instead of the amount of $ donated. So real crowd funding.
You may donate just a dollar in ETH , DAI, USDC or Matic and it gets algorithmically augmented based in the number of supporters.
We are an international think-tank of artists, researchers, creative technologists and token engineers paving the way of creative innovation in the web3 for/with movement artists/embodied perspective.
To donate you need to use your Metamask wallet and you may use ETH or Matic. Please share and...thank you!
Cool opportunity to get you wallet and etc! Follow videos!
BIONICA AUDIOVISUAL IS A PROJECT BY BIONICA WOMEN, ART, TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY FROM BARCELONA-SPAIN.
BIONICA purpose of bionica is to vindicate thinking, production and and the artistic and technological practices carried out by women.
In this first version of BIÒNICA are interested in exhibiting a diversity of audiovisual proposals from all over the world.
The call extends to all artists regardless of their gender who deal with issues related to women and enthusiasts of film, dance film, video or documentary.
Biònica Audiovisual will be held online, based on the website www.bionicas.net as well as an online presentation in the context of Biònica women, art, technology and society found remotely from the city of Barcelona between 27 and December 30, 2021.
I am republishing here a process log kept by Marc Coniglio in Facebook during the "DIGITAL BODY" lab sessions that took place at Lake Studios Berlin started September 2nd 2021 with an amazing group of international artists.
Setup for "DIGITAL BODY " is ongoing at the Lake Studios Berlin and today was sensor day.
We have prepared a range of input devices so that once underway nothing would slow the creative juices flowing.
DIGITAL BODY no.1.
Performance & Technology Laboratory : IMAGE & DATA
Hosted by Mark Coniglio, Benjamin Krieg and Guests
02.09 – 14.09.2021
So happy to serve as a guide during this two-week process at the Lake Studios Berlin, as we attempt to reconsider media and performance, to name the potentials and pitfalls as we seek to see our practice anew.
Digital Body Workshop Journal: Day 1 - Abandoning Preconceived Notions: What are our expectations about performance and media? What are the prejudices and stereotypes we carry inside, our points of excitement and our irritations? We spent several hours exploring these questions during the first day of the workshop. It is our attempt to see the digital materials with fresh eyes so we might put them to use in new and unexpected ways.
Digital Body Workshop Journal: Days 2 + 3: What is an Image? The word slips easily from the tongue, but what do we really mean? We dug in to that topic as Benjamin Krieg shared from his vast body of work with groups like She She Pop and others, as Marlon Barrios Solano pushed us inward and outward with several poetic provocations, and Armando Menicacci led us through a rigorous, analytic examination of the structural implications of the word itself. We responded to all of this by having each participant create and share rapidly improvised scenarios comprised only of a projector connected to a video camera in relation to the performer and audience – each of which led to long, rich discussions of the implications and possible meanings they portrayed. When thinking about performance, what does the word image conjure for you?
Digital Body Workshop Journal: Days 4 + 5: The Barrier of Technology. After two full days of working only with the technology of a camera, a video projector, and a performer, we opened the door to more complex tools like Isadora itself, but also robotic cameras, green screens, a Rokoko motion capture suit, and more. Immediately upon doing so, the energy in the room changed from one of quiet experimentation and extensive reflection to one of excitement ("Wow!!!"), desire and curiosity ("I want to...." or "How can i...?") and at least some frustration ("Why can't I get this working?"). These tools and devices can offer fresh and compelling new modes of expression, but their complexity can also impede a free-flowing artistic process. Please join the conversation in the comments below by answering the question we'll be asking next: what does media/technology give us, but what also does it take away?
Foto: Benjamin Krie
Digital Body Workshop Journal, Week 1 – "What is it?": For the last six days, we have attempted to (re)encounter the image: to imagine it, to read it, to wrangle the hardware and software required to record and render it. We did this within the frame of our overarching goal: to abandon preconceived notions and see these materials in a new way. As we start week 2, I ask myself, "how did we do?"
In the end, it is impossible to ignore or deny thousands of years of seeing and making images, from cave paintings to virtual reality. It's in our bones. Yet, we managed to keep ourselves in a constant state of questioning. As Bebe Miller wisely advised us to do last night, we kept stepping back and asking ourself one question, over, and over, and over again.
"What is it?"
For me, embracing that question was the great success of this first week. Now we will see if we can do the same with "data."
Foto: Benjamin Krieg
Digital Body Workshop Journal, Days 7 & 8– Big Data: As we did with the word "technology" in the first week, we started the second week by asking "what is data?" This question could be debated ad infinitum, but here I will mention three crucial points: "data is interpretation and representation", "data is a reduction", and perhaps most importantly "data has value". But how does this apply to using data, from a performer or from the world, in a performance?
With this in mind, we began to navigate "the gear": this is a sensor, this is the kind of data it measures and represents, this is how we get it into the computer, and this is what we can do with it – practical realities that can often seem at odds with the artistry.
To assimilate and balance the theory, the "how to", and the desire to express and share our artistic vision, remains the goal of this second week.
Benjamin Krieg
Digital Body No. 1 Journal - Day 9 - Data Invasion: Today's pictures feature only the participants of the lab, because we spent nearly two hours today vigorously responding to the works presented by our guest speaker Christopher Kondek. (https://doubleluckyproductions.org)
Each of the works dug into the topic of data in a different way – the stock market, our heart beats, lie detectors and more. But none did so more provocatively than "You Are Out There" – where audience members were asked to give their identification cards as a deposit for a set of headphones, not knowing that the faces and names on those personal documents would be projected, scanned, seemingly shredded (it was faked) and otherwise exposed to the entire audience in various ways.
This highly political work led to an intense discussion among us: could an art piece ethically draw attention to matters of data privacy by violating that privacy?
I cannot reproduce the incredibly well articulated points that so many of our intrepid explorers offered in a Facebook post. Suffice to say, thanks to Chris' presentation and the ensuing discussion, we could no longer pretend that data was just a stream of numbers captured from a performer's body. Losing control of your data, especially for those who live under authoritarian regimes, is not a game. It is a matter of life and death – a notion that will weigh strong on our minds as we continue through this week.