Dancing at the Edge of the World
A speculative performance exploring the body as a site of knowledge production for AI design, rooted in Grotowski-inspired practice and Haraway feminist theory.
Dancing at the Edge of the World is a speculative performance piece exploring the intersections between the body-based practices promoted by Grotowski’s Theatre Laboratory and Haraway’s feminist theory. Based on a multimedia non-linear narrative, it shifts the focus of knowledge production for AI design by rooting it in the experience of the body.
Building on the idea that ancestor rituals involve innovation and invention often expressed in the context of power relationships, REPLICA devises the piece as an immersive performance in which AI-based technologies enhance the expressive capabilities of performers’ bodies. Biometric information harvested from moving bodies in real-time is translated into sonified cues and becomes entangled with performance scores for voice and movement. The performers’ bodies generate traces in space, a living cartography of their capabilities and limitations. Technology becomes a medium for interconnection and interrogating the embodied agencies engaged in a ritual act of survival.
The speculative narrative centres on the vulnerability of the body, its interconnectedness with the natural environment and with each other. Building on Ursula Le Guin’s concept of a Yin utopia, the piece brings embodied experiences from a future that is dark, wet, obscure, weak, yielding, passive, participatory, circular, cyclical, peaceful and nurturant — a future in which society has slowly evolved towards an underwater existence.
Media
Collaborators
- Creative Coder — Meredith Thomas
- Artistic Direction, Performance — Diana Neranti
- Costume and Interaction Design — Mika Satomi
- Sound Design — Johannes Helberger
- Sound Design — Lugh ONeill
- Project Assistant — Emma Collauzzo
- Admin, Performance — Dimitri Cacouris
- Theatre Devising Lead, Performance — Kirsty Hamilton
- Choreographic Thinking, Performance — Joana Chicau
- Dance-Theatre — Kate Ryan
- Dance-Theatre, Singing — Saraï O'gara
- Dance-Theatre, Singing — Angela Monaco
Institutions
REPLICA, Kling Klang Klong, VolkswagenStiftung, Weizenbaum Institute, TU Berlin, Berlin Open Lab