TANZ: Kiesecker | Hoess "#TOUCH" (D)

TANZ Karlsruhe and ZKM present Dance at the Intersection of Media Art and AI.

Today, it seems as though AI can do many things. But creating genuine encounters is not among them. Is that why it tries to avoid them?

Two dancers are located at different sites within ZKM. Each is accompanied by half of the audience and by “BUGGY,” a portable artificial assistant. In order to reach the performance site and physically encounter one another there, they must make their way through a live-generated parkour. At designated action fields, BUGGY generates various tasks that the performers must solve.

At the destination, the parkour culminates in a choreographed performance that reflects on the collaboration between human performers and AI. Live-generated visual projections and fragments of speech make the previously invisible interaction with a Large Language Model tangible and expand the performance space into a digital dimension.

The connections between choreographic practice and artificial intelligence are reconsidered. Rather than using AI purely as a tool for improvisation, it is deliberately employed as a structuring element. At the same time, its limitations are made visible: while movements can be analyzed, the quality of human-to-human encounters remains beyond its logic. How do digital systems influence artistic processes without replacing them? Can they give rise to an independent artistic language of their own? Beyond this, the project initiates a critical discourse on the role of AI in everyday life, particularly with regard to questions of embodiment, interaction, and social proximity.
 

The project #touch is realized as a co-production by KIESECKER | HOESS TANZ Karlsruhe and ZKM Karlsruhe. The project is made possible through project funding from the Landesverband Freie Tanz- und Theaterschaffende Baden-Württemberg (LaFT BW) e.V.