Movimentos Codificados * 2024
Centro Cultural - Qta. Magnólia (Madeira, Portugal)
Movimentos Codificados [Encoded Movements] is an arts-based performance experiment situated on the threshold between contemporary dance, generative AI, and techno-philosophical critique. Conceived as an artistic “experiment in authorship,” the work proposes a deliberately paradoxical setup: António Baía Reis “feeds the machine” by custom-configuring ChatGPT-4 to generate a choreography under a constraint designed to mislead it, minimising conventional dance references (history, technique, established vocabularies) so that the system must output something that claims creativity while revealing its limits.
The choreography that emerged, ironically centred on cosmogenesis and the origin of humankind, becomes the project’s first conceptual twist: from countless possible themes, the AI gravitates toward a mythic, foundational narrative. Reis then positions himself not as choreographer or performer, but as a human conduit, a “receptacle” translating machine instruction into embodied action, reversing the usual hierarchy in which technology mediates human-to-human communication. Here, the human mediates machine-to-human-to-human, and the psychological effect is part of the artwork: Reis describes a productive discomfort in occupying an “infertile” artistic terrain where he neither authors nor interprets, but transmits.
The piece gains its living force through the dancer David Sousa (a student in Contemporary Dance Performance training at the Conservatório – Escola Profissional das Artes da Madeira). As Reis recites and transmits the AI’s choreography, Sousa embodies it, transforming what could feel mechanically inexpressive into something visceral, organic, and affectively charged. The performance thus becomes a staged negotiation between algorithmic prescription and human expressivity: not a demonstration of AI capability, but an inquiry into what movement becomes when its source is non-human and its meaning is completed by the dancer’s intelligence, breath, and interpretation.
Presented at Quinta Magnólia – Centro Cultural (Funchal, Madeira), the work unfolded inside a broader artistic ecosystem: it was performed within the space of Filipa Venâncio’s painting exhibition “A Sala da Senhora – Take 2”, creating an inter-arts dialogue in which dance “invaded” the pictorial environment and, in turn, the paintings reframed the audience’s reading of the performance. This curatorial accident becomes part of the piece’s grammar, suggesting parallel worlds briefly opened through proximity: dance, AI, architecture, objects, cinema, sound, and the immediacy of bodies sharing a room.
The project also explicitly extends beyond the performance moment through public discussion: after the presentation, the work opened into a collective reflection with students and teachers across dance, theatre, and media, foregrounding the ethical and aesthetic questions it raises: AI as (non)creative agent, the shifting role of artist and performer, the pedagogical consequences for training, and the refusal of “hype” in favour of felt experience and critical thought.
Originally conceived in 2023 by António Baía Reis, Petr Vašků, and Sára Solmošiová during an artistic residency at JAMU Theatre Faculty (Brno, Czech Republic), and first presented at JAMU Theatre Conference 2023, Encoded Movements continues as an evolving inquiry into hybrid authorship. Its 2024 presentation in Madeira was enabled through collaboration between the Conselho de Cultura and the Laboratório de Performance Experimental (University of Madeira), the Conservatório’s dance programme, and Quinta Magnólia – Centro Cultural.
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