On Tuesday, I stepped into an old school building in Amsterdam that houses the studio of cross-media designer, performer and dancer Luna Maurer. A pleasant warmth greeted me as Luna opened the door. Wearing a particularly cool black jumpsuit, she showed me around her space. I had never been in a studio like this before, and a stage floor for dancing is certainly something you rarely come across. It was a space that invited me to explore my body in an entirely new way.
Guided by my question of how technology can help us tune back into our bodies and broaden the spectrum of bodily sensations, I reached out to Luna to get to know “Dance Out of Pattern”. The project explores how dancing with a non-human partner, a generative AI model, can sharpen our awareness of what it means to be human. As I learned in the conversation with Luna, the AI captures not only my movements but also my facial expressions, objects (if there are any in the room) and even my clothing, and weaves them into the narrative. It took me a while to figure out why Joe, one of the voices in my ears, kept steering my thoughts towards stripes and dark waters. In the following paragraphs, I want to tell you how I translated these thoughts into movement and what I found particularly difficult. It was an extraordinary experience that continues to inspire me. It shows that technology doesn’t always have to make us faster and more efficient. At times I felt “seen”, and my movements became more confident. On the other hand, the philosophical voice also threw me completely off balance. Out of shyness, I clung to my familiar movement patterns in those moments and kept my gaze on the floor.
Luna introduced me to her ideas and the technology behind them. Music filled the room from the speakers, without vocals but with a gripping atmosphere. Then came the hardest part of the exercise: I was supposed to move and, in doing so, feed the AI with information. For about twenty seconds, I danced without a voice giving me impulses. These seconds determined what the AI would later give back to me in order to change my learned movement patterns. From then on, the moving conversation began. “Let the stripes breathe outward like unfolding wings,” the AI said into my ear, for example. I remember stretching out my arms, making myself big and feeling the fabric of my top against my body.
In total, I danced with six different models, and each time I tried to dance the first twenty seconds differently from the time before. Often it was just small swings of my arms or a gentle bouncing in my legs. Thanks to Luna’s prompts, I was able to rehearse with a dance teacher, follow the thoughts of a philosopher and take on the role of a child. Finally, the AI, acting as a best friend, boosted my confidence in my dancing abilities.
Each of these conversations demanded my full concentration. Sometimes I had the feeling that the voice in my ear was saying exactly what I was thinking. This created a constant back-and-forth between my thoughts and what my body was doing. However, I couldn’t catch every single word and translate it into movement. Often, only one image that stood out stuck with me, and my body responded to it. But sometimes I broke away from the voice entirely and simply moved however I felt like moving. I clearly noticed that shame played a role in how I moved with the AI. Over time, I realised that I had to leave my comfort zone to get more stimulating responses. I grew bolder and bolder. After about two hours, I left the studio with my head buzzing. A lot had shifted inside me, and yet I wondered whether this would also show in my movements.
A few days later, I received the videos by email and was able to look at the experience again from the outside. I watched myself with mixed feelings. At first, I was pleased to see how openly I had engaged with the experiment. It was easy to recognise the moments in which I was able to follow the voice, but also the moments in which I doubted or hesitated.
In the first video, “Ritual”, I see myself moving in a way I have never seen myself move before. What I felt on the inside is also visible from the outside. I was carried not only by the voice but also by the music. From around the fifth minute, I let go. My gaze is directed into the distance, and I remember that this helped me take in all the impressions. With the philosopher, on the other hand, I seem inhibited. His statements raised questions I couldn’t answer in the moment, so I only picked up on things here and there. At “clenched fists” I have to smile, because it sounded profound, yet I simply didn’t know what to do with it. But one sentence has stayed with me since: “Is the crawling a way of listening to the ground or is the ground already speaking through your knees and palms?” The ground becomes another conversation partner whose answer I can only feel in my body, in its resistance and in how I adapt to it. The interaction as a child turned out differently than I had expected. The playful side barely shows. I cautiously try out light movements, look friendly but focused, and come across as rather closed off.
I had to consciously remind myself not to judge the recordings. After all, that was exactly what this experiment was about: perceiving all sensations, the pleasant and the unpleasant alike. They are what make us human and allow us to grow.
