From dance archive to creative catalyst with Google AI

Sir Wayne McGregor

Multi award winning British choreographer and director

In 2019, I started a collaboration with Google Arts & Culture Lab to explore how AI could enable a more active dialogue with my 25-year body of work. From this, AISOMA was born.

AISOMA is a Google AI-powered choreography tool that acts as a creative catalyst by generating new, original dance rooted in my choreographic language.

I initially used it in the studio to expand, challenge, and interrogate existing movement sequences. Now, we’re bringing a new version of this tool online for anyone to create with, as part of my exhibition: Wayne McGregor: Infinite Bodies at Somerset House.

How You Dance with AISOMA

You are invited to perform a short dance. A custom AI then analyzes your movement and extends your sequence with original choreographic phrases, all rooted in my movement vocabulary. AISOMA has been trained on almost four million poses, extracted from hundreds of videos from my archive, spanning more than two decades of my work.

Working with Google Arts & Culture Lab, we developed a bespoke model using TensorFlow 2 and MediaPipe pose. This allowed us to move beyond 2D analysis we had in the first version of the tool and extract the poses of a human body in a three dimensional space, enabling us to map and comprehend the intricate, architectural grammar of a body in motion. It's about seeing movement and understanding the physical potential in a new light.

AISOMA isn't the final answer; it's a starting point. It’s an invitation for you to become an active participant in the choreographic and creative process.

Ultimately, dance making is an act of play, a physical language in a constant state of evolution.