Kinetic Imaginations: Exploring the Possibilities of Combining AI and Dance

This paper presents an interdisciplinary project which aims at cross-fertilizing dance with artificial intelligence. It utilizes AI as an approach to explore and unveil new territories of possible dance movements. Statistical analyzes of recorded human dance movements provide the foundation for a system that learns poses from human dancers, extends them with novel variations and creates new movement sequences. The system provides dancers with a tool for exploring possible movements and finding inspiration from motion sequences generated automatically in real time in the form of an improvising avatar. Experiences of bringing the avatar to the studio as a virtual dance partner indicate the usefulness of the software as a tool for kinetic exploration. In addition to these artistic results, the experiments also raise questions about how AI generally relates to artistic agency and creativity. Is the improvising avatar truly creative, or is it merely some kind of extension of the dancer or the AI researcher? By analyzing the developed platform as a framework for exploration of conceptual movement spaces, and by considering the interaction between dancer, researcher and software, some possible interpretations of this particular kind of creative process can be offered.