Abstract (Short paper)

Keywords: Emergent behavior, dance, motion capture, distributed cognition, artificial neural network.

This research investigates the possibility for emergent choreographic behaviour to arise from the interactions between a human dancer and a learning, digital performing agent. The cognitive framework is extended through theories of distributed cognition to take into account the two interacting agents rather than a single agent and its environment. The Artificial Neural Network based performing agent demonstrated emergent dance behaviour when performing live with the human dancer. The agent was able to follow the dancer, create movement phrases based on what the dancer was performing and recognize short movement phrases, as a result of the interaction of the dancer’s motion captured movement data and the agent’s artificial neural network. This emergent behaviour was not explicitly programmed, but emerged as a result of the learning process and the interactions with the human dancer.

• Steph Hutchison is a choreographer, performer, and artist-researcher. She is an experienced and sought after artist with background in contemporary dance, improvisation, circus arts, physical theatre, dance video and dance technology. Steph is completing her PhD at Deakin University’s Motion.Lab (Melbourne, Australia). meta: discourses from dancers inside action machines.
• Dr. John McCormick (Melbourne, Australia) has worked in the areas of new media dance, motion capture and telematics performance. John is currently researching movement visualisation and analysis, and with the Centre for Intelligent Systems Research for the past three years investigating machine learning of movement and its application in the performing arts.
• Professor Kim Vincs (Melbourne, Australia) is the Director of the Deakin Motion.Lab, Deakin
  University’s motion capture studio and performance technology research centre, which she established in 2006. She has been a choreographer for over twenty years, and has focused on interactive dance technology for the last ten. Kim has five Australian Research Council projects in dance, technology and science, and has established numerous industry collaborations in motion capture, movement analysis and digital art.
• Dr. Jordan Beth Vincent is an Associate Research Fellow at the Deakin Motion.Lab (Melbourne, Australia) researching dance and digital technology, a position she has held since 2013. Jordan’s background is in dance history and criticism, and she holds a PhD early 20th century Australian dance history from the University of Melbourne. Since 2008, she has been a critic for The Age newspaper, and has contributed to a range of online and print publications in the areas of dance, physical theatre and circus

Full Text (PDF) p. 566-569