Dance researchers use AI and robotics to rethink how we archive and access performance

Coventry University’s Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE) is playing a key role in a new initiative that aims to explore how artificial intelligence (AI) could protect artistic heritage and create more opportunities in the creative sector.

The project, led by the University of Nottingham and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s (AHRC) Bridging Responsible Artificial Intelligence Divides (BRAID) programme, is generating knowledge about how AI can be used responsibly and creatively to create, document, revive and conserve complex artworks – particularly live performance, media arts and their archives.

C-DaRE's Director, Professor Sarah Whatley, is leading one case study alongside Dr Kate Marsh (Assistant Professor) and Lily Hayward-Smith (Research Assistant), which explores how AI can be used to help artists, archivists and cultural organisations record and preserve dance and performance in ways that make them easier to revisit, reinterpret and use again.

The team will be working with dancers and robots to explore how performance involving human-machine interaction can be archived. This will include exploring more inclusive ways of capturing data - particularly with and for disabled dancers - that challenge traditional, one-size-fits-all uses of technology.

The goal is to ensure AI can record and recreate performances in ways that prioritise care, physical presence and accessibility.

Sarah and Lily are also working on a second case study that includes focus on Siobhan Davies RePlay - a digital archive to enhance access to the work of the renowned choreographer and C-DaRE Associate Professor, Dame Siobhan Davies.

This part of the project will explore how AI might support the long-term sustainability and creative re-use of digital performance archives. Drawing on the RePlay archive, the research will examine how AI tools can help new audiences and artists discover, reinterpret and build on historical dance works.

It also aims to provide a model for how other dance and performance archives might be revitalised and made more widely accessible in the future.

Find out more about the BRAID project.

Visit the Centre for Dance Research.