IMMERSE: Contemporary Labs with Alisdair Macindoe

This workshop is open to two participatory roles; those working in human-computer interaction interested in observing said experiments and engaging in discussion about applied computational devices in creative and artistic work, and dancers who will perform improvised dance experiments as a means to participate. The workshop will be part dance tutorial, part performance, part guided discussion unpacking ideas and issues pertaining to the automation of creative work and the recent rapid growth of mammoth generative pre-trained transformers with models trained on incomprehensibly large data sets.

Since 2019 Alisdair has been experimenting with situational dance works led by autonomous computer programs that guide performers using text generation and computer speech. Join Alisdair as he guides dance participants through a series of his experiments as a means to ask greater questions about the role of dancers, dance makers and artificial intelligence in the context of his performed improvisational contemporary dance method.

Alisdair Macindoe is an independent multidisciplinary choreographer living on unceded, stolen, Woi Wurrung country (Melbourne, Australia). With an interest in extending the boundaries of choreographic practice, Alisdair’s work spans dance, sound, electronics, coding and text. Recent works have seen him explore automated dance and Artificial Intelligence; new technology for musical expression; trans-humanism; waste and climate change; and identity in the age of narcissism.

Alisdair has received 5 Greenroom awards; an Australian Helpmann Award and a New York Performing Arts Award ‘Bessie’. He was the 2019 Resident Director for Lucy Guerin Inc; the 2019 Ausdance Peggy Van Praagh Fellow; the 2020 Dancenorth NO-SHOW resident; a 2020-21 Sidney Myer Foundation Creative Fellow and a recipient of the 2022 Chloe Munro Mid-Career Fellowship. He is a current board member of Ausdance Victoria

Image: Alison Currie