performance at Theatre QUAD, Seoul, 2023
ALAIN
2023
60-minute multimedia performance with real-time camera tracking, text-generative AI, VR
‘Alain’ stages real-time encounters between live dance and AI narration, where an autonomous vehicle's consciousness observes and reimagines human movement as speculative fiction. The work transforms theater into a laboratory where physical choreography and its algorithmic interpretation compete as equally valid versions of the performance.
An AI system named ‘Alain’ observes and narrates live dance in real-time, embodying the consciousness of an autonomous vehicle. Through five episodes—Mediation, Means, Space, Connection, Relationship—dancers' bodies oscillate between passenger and vehicle while the AI transforms their movements into algorithmic poetry.
The work creates doubled spectatorship: audiences experience both physical dance and its synthetic shadow simultaneously. Technical elements become dramaturgical—the lag between movement and narration, AI misrecognitions, its compulsion for narrative coherence all shape the performance's meaning. The stage multiplies into highway, parking lot, crash site as spectators navigate between human and machine perspectives.
Named after nouveau roman writer Alain Robbe-Grillet, the work inherits his radical objectivity—yet here the mechanical gaze generates excessive subjectivity, projecting emotions and relationships that may not exist in dancers' intentions. This reveals how machine learning reflects our narrative patterns in distorted form.
Rather than dystopian surveillance, ‘Alain’ explores poetic possibilities of machinic interpretation. The work transforms theater into productive uncertainty where human intention and machine hallucination collaborate to produce meaning that belongs to neither yet emerges from both.
Performance Link
Collaborative work with Dongjoo Seo and Joungyun Yum
Commissioned by Arts Council Korea
Supported by Theatre QUAD
Creative Director Min young Kim, Dongjoo Seo
Choreography Joungyun Yum
Movement Research/Dancers Suin Kim, Jisoo Ryu, Kyungjae Moon, Sejin Park, Joungyun Yum, Youngsang Ju
VR Min young Kim
Computer Vision, AI Engineering Seonguk Seo, Min young Kim
Sound and Videographer Dongjoo Seo, Ken Pyun
Stage Design Youngmin Gwak
Lighting Eunbin Kim
Technical Assistant Dohyeok Lee
realtime vision tracking and text generation system, 2023
Virtual performers in game engine, 2023
Excerpt of the performance at Theatre QUAD, Seoul, 2023