WET Code: Rethinking Choreography and Control Through Human-AI Co-Evolution
This practice-led PhD critically examines the evolving choreographies shaped by the dynamic co-evolution of human bodies and generative AI. It seeks to answer the question: "How might generative AI become intimate with the body?" A double move characterises this technological mediation: (1) the replication of human bodies through the act of mapping and (2) the concurrent advancement of both the replicated bodies and the increasingly sophisticated mapping techniques enabling their duplication. Each "signal" that emerges through this tension is reimagined as a tactile afferent—a phenomenon this thesis terms "WET code" (an acronym for "Write Everything Twice"). This reciprocal interplay between human bodies and machinic code challenges AI paradigms that depict master-slave relationships, proposing a self-organising choreographic coding practice instead (Forsythe, 2011; McGregor, 2019; Portanova, 2013).
By fostering a collaborative environment involving dancers, choreographers, AI researchers, software engineers, and various technological/material participants—such as 3D animation software, LiDAR sensors, screens, digital pipelines, avatars, sound, Baroque dance notations, and TikTok dance challenges—this thesis adopts a transdisciplinary approach to address the complex entanglements between humans and machinic code, suggesting a more materially-grounded reading of control. My practice examines the transformations in form and intensity of these material enmeshments through three dynamic processes: (1) corpsing, investigating the pleasures found in losing composure; (2) incidental, emerging through circumstantial positioning within corpsing’s performative landscape; and (3) amplifying, the self-sustaining feedback loop enabled by the dynamics of corpsing and incidental, resulting in the simultaneous amplification and destabilisation of control.
WET code, with its inherent tensions and flaking qualities, often evolves without direct human oversight. Instead, it emerges from the excess material of its previous engagements, frequently developing into hyperrealistic, figurative avatars that draw the audience into uncanny mimesis—effectively doubling the impact and complexity of engagement (Baudrillard, 1994). This method mirrors humanist desires to replicate human life while simultaneously generating tensions through the duplication of these desires. These provocations challenge conventional observer patterns where detached spectators merely witness change (Barad, 2007). In this mediated environment, such perceived separation is illusory (Baudrillard, 1994; Chun, 2021; Klossowski, 1970). Instead, this practice equips participants with a toolkit characterised by the absurdity of recognising the roles they unconsciously perform (Barad, 2007; Golding, 2021).
This investigation critiques older Enlightenment knowledge hierarchies and promotes a more sensuous, poetic understanding of human-AI co-existence, grounded in new materialism and decentralised ways of being, steering choreographic inquiry toward a generative form of intelligence (Foucault, 1984; Golding, 2021; Gemeinböck, 2023; Nail, 2018; PinkyDoll, 2023). The ontogenetic perspective on co-evolution that emerges from this analysis paves the way for new organisational realities defined by feedback, relations, and simultaneity. This new type of dance has no concrete technological concretisation, tangible substance, or specific form of expression. Instead, the possibility of technologically elevating calculus beyond its empirical condition emerges. Ultimately, by examining alternative modes of being with algorithms, WET code generates a method that itself generates further methods solely based on its self-organising potentials.
