Not Yet Perfect

Not Yet Perfect began as a question in response to an AI generated piece of classical music. The problems that arose through the AI generation of music included the experience of time as a human specific experience. If AI can generate art as a mathematical sequence, what about dance (a collaboration between physics, the human body, and expression) is uniquely human?

Through my research it became clear that Stanford University’s Editable Dance Generation was emerging as a leading technology in choreographic generation in 2024. In a sea of social media AI generated videos that confused limbs and counted too many fingers and toes, EDGE was leading the charge by solving the problem of gravity and continuity.

As we dove into EDGE generated dance, one question kept me on my toes. Why were we doing this? Why were we, as dancers and choreographers, so fascinated by, and even contributing to, the training of a technology that has the potential to ruin our careers?

The answer I kept coming back to was curiosity. Perhaps the human experience of existence is a brain that provides the ability and drive to learn and create, and yet that drive overrides our understanding of potential to harm. We are smart enough to learn, but not enough to know when we must stop.