Reimagining dance through technology was the focus of the CARIFESTA XV Big Conversation entitled, “AI Can’t Tek We Riddim.”
The conversation was an invitation to think of artificial intelligence not as a replacement for the lived experience, but as being in dialogue with it.
Trinidad and Tobago performer, choreographer, and writer Sonja Dumas led a discussion where three artists shared their views on AI’s impact on the performing arts.
Akuzuru, an avant-garde artist known for her multi-sensorial work, cautioned that AI must not replace the lived experience.
“Experience is what shapes you. It’s what sculpts you. It’s what sculpts your thinking and sculpts the mind. So, what is the fearful thing that I am seeing? It’ i’s that this artificiality has become very trendy. The fear is that people will lose out on real, primal experience of existence, of life, of connecting.”
Executive Director of the Barbados Dance Project, John Hunte, built on Akuzuru’s message by advising that we not confine ourselves only to what AI can offer us now, but become engaged in the creation of a generation of AI that reflects our reality as Caribbean people.
“I can’t get it to roll its shoulders. I can’t get it to roll its back. I can’t get it to wine its hips. I can’t get it to bend over. That is because the creators of AI, up until this point, don’t have that in their frame of reference. I think, until we get to the place where we can directly engage with this technology to truly reflect us, we’re in danger of reinforcing those aspects of that technology that reinforce aspects of ourselves that keep us separate and apart and disconnected from our reality and our identity as Caribbean people.”
And performing artist Valencia James’ dance duets with AI and performances in virtual spaces approach the technology as a creative partner.
“For me, in my personal journey, I realised that, yes, I wasn’t able to express myself as a Caribbean person, I wasn’t able to do much undulations. But it did give something interesting to my way of performing because I improvise. I am an improviser and so I was looking at it from the stance of a kind of visual stimulus and a way to respond and to come out of movement habits that come up in your training.”
The message from all the artists present was that AI “is different, not superior”, and a complement to creativity and connection, but not the centre of it.