This audio-visual collaboration between Tom Dale Company, The Light Surgeons, and Chronic Insanity Theatre is an R&D project exploring ecology and artificial intelligence through the lens of James Bridle‘s Ways of Being. Bridle powerfully rethinks intelligence not as exclusively human or algorithmic, but as relational, emergent, and ecological—distributed across all living systems: plants, animals, fungi, ecosystems, and algorithms.

Inspired by these ideas, we explored how choreography could emerge from systems rather than individual intention. We developed choreography using simple rule-based systems to generate complex, collective movement patterns. Dancers were tracked live using open-source AAAseed software and Xbox Kinect depth cameras, creating real-time generative visuals that responded to their movements. This created a feedback loop between body, technology, and space—a shared intelligence where neither dancer nor machine was fully in control.

Commissioned by Watermans Arts Centre as a pilot within the ArtCast4D framework (Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme, 2025), the project tested this emerging creative technology platform in the VIP studio at Nottingham University, combining floor projection with motion tracking to explore the dialogue between embodiment, light, and more-than-human intelligence.

We presented this work at The Place, London, as an immersive “soft-cinema lounge experience.” The main theatre was transformed into an installation where a suspended screen projected edited footage and choreography from above. Red cushions arranged below invited audiences to lie down and gaze upward, experiencing dance filmed from overhead while viewing from below—an inverted orientation that created an intriguing dynamic between viewer and performer.

With no time restrictions, visitors engaged however they chose. Chairs around the perimeter offered alternative viewpoints, and some began by observing from the edges before lying down, while others immediately immersed themselves beneath the projection. Engagement ranged from 30 minutes to over an hour.

This early experiment marks the beginning of what we hope to develop into a more expansive, touring work, continuing to evolve our software platforms and collaborating with composers whose music inspired this research.

Project Partners:

Tom Dale Company
Chronic Insanity Theatre
AAAseed
VIP STUDIO Virtual Immersive Production Studio
Watermans Arts Centre
The Place 

Technical Support:

QED Productions
Luke Marino
Chris Flux

Thanks to:

University Of Nottingham 
The Bath House Hackney Wick