The most fascinating thing about all the buzz around AI is that about half, but maybe more, of all the hype surrounding it large language models on which it is based is, above all, marketing. Note: I am well aware of the lightning-fast developments surrounding the new technology. I am also amazed at the possibilities of all the computer power that has now been released. The very fine conversations with Claude are fascinating and he also does some stupid tasks for me. But no creative tasks. Because in that, AI still fails hopelessly. Don't believe the hype.

A fine example of this was this year's opening of the Holland Festival Our own King Willem Alexander was given the opportunity to perform with Cyber Subin served a piece of AI bluff, and it was a good thing Maxima was not there. After all, she needed to be with her daughter, who had just undergone surgery for a complex upper arm fracture due to horse riding. 

Traditional dance knowledge

Cyber Subin is the presentation of an investigation into the possibilities of capturing a Thai ritual dance form in language. So that that heritage can be recorded. This involves international universities like MIT. I quote the project page: "This project introduces an approach for translating traditional dance knowledge into interactive computational models beyond static recordings of dance performances. In particular, this research presents the concept of 'Human-AI co-dancing', integrating human dancers with virtual dance partners controlled by models derived from dance principles. To demonstrate this concept, the project focuses on choreographic principles deconstructed from the knowledge of traditional Thai dance. The principles are analysed and translated into computational procedures that dynamically manipulate the movements of a virtual character by modifying animation keyframes and the movements of individual joints in real time." (translated with DeepL, a German translation site with a combination of AI and human input)

Modular synthesiser

Long story short: Cyber Subin delivers a research presentation of over an hour that probably would not have been better programmed as the opening of the Holland Festival, but maybe just as well. What we saw is a summary of technology as it stands today. 

Researchers, together with dancers who know the tradition, have chosen some parameters. Then we are talking about speed, energy, direction change, pivot points, things like that. They feed those parameters to an AI system. That is represented in the background by images of a modular synthesiser for good measure. That AI system generates images of moving avatars, which are quite capable of representing traditional Thai dance quite nicely.

The theatrical part of the performance consists of the four human dancers duelling with the avatars. Which does not always succeed. Certainly not when they take the parameters to absurd intensities (300 per cent in the horizontal plane, for instance). Then the avatars get caught up in a hals-und-beinbruch which dwarfs the complicated upper arm fracture of the unfortunate crown princess.

Audience may participate 

Eventually, the audience gets to join in. Spectators are allowed to control the AI themselves, and so it creates quite a bit of havoc. In particular, we see a somewhat laborious struggle between the rigidity of the AI and the impossibility of capturing something like movement in percentages of a parameter.

Yet a miracle happened. Audience members were allowed to come and dance along themselves, and at that moment a little girl in an angelic dress also ventured on stage. Sometimes she accidentally grabbed the light for a moment, giving everything a rembrandtesque allure. But the little angel also went looking for examples. She tried to follow the now disintegrating avatars and then focused on the four dancers. She tried to imitate them. But they were mostly busy with their own dance. The girl chose eggs for her money and left the stage.

Everything is about imitation

Then the penny dropped. Dance traditions have no language other than that of imitation. Elders teach the young their art by imitating. And with imitation, the young add their own idiom to the dance. This is how the tradition has lived on for millennia. Not petrified, but bubbling like water. 

Any attempt, especially in the West, to capture dance for eternity in a notation is inadequate. Dance is here and now, is contact, is connection, leading, following and taking over. That those very aspects in Cyber Subin revolved solely around artificial avatars was actually quite depressing. Cultural heritage might be stored in energy-guzzling data centres, but is that eternity? You wish all that energy was spent on protecting living tradition. 

So nice that I did get that message from the opening of the Holland Festival.