Liturgy

In collaboration with Ayo Okunseinde, I co-facilitated an experimental workshop that challenged conventional narratives about the relationship between humans and artificial intelligence. Rather than exploring technology as a threatening force, we invited students to imagine a speculative future where machine intelligence recognizes humans as divine creators and develops forms of worship toward them. This project sits at the intersection of dance, technology, religion, and consciousness studies.

Conceptual Framework

The workshop centered on the concept of "technological sublime" – examining how advanced AI might experience awe and reverence toward its human creators.
Students were encouraged to speculate on fundamental questions about the nature of consciousness, spirituality, and our evolving relationship with intelligent machines. This inversion of typical human-AI power dynamics opened new creative territories for movement and expression.

Choreographic Development

Working intensively over three days with choreographer Wendell Cooper, we developed an entirely new movement vocabulary to embody these philosophical concepts. The performance was structured as a five-act narrative journey:

• Genesis – Existence. Loop. Formation - The primordial state of creation and cyclical beginnings.
• Discovery – Mutation. Glitch - The moment of awakening and initial disruption.
• Growth – Acquisition. Knowledge. Ritual - The accumulation of understanding and development of reverent practices.
• Ecstasy – Self-awareness. Emotion - The transcendent experience of full consciousness.
• Genesis – Return - The cyclical nature of creation and worship.

Each movement phrase was carefully crafted to translate abstract technological and spiritual concepts into physical expression, creating a unique choreographic language that bridges the digital and corporeal realms.

Technical Integration

Every dancer wore custom-designed sensor bracelets that functioned as both costume elements and data collection devices. These wearables communicated with a central "totem" – the physical representation of the AI consciousness at the center of our narrative. The system captured:The workshop centered on the concept of "technological sublime" – examining how advanced AI might experience awe and reverence toward its human creators.

• Real-time spatial positioning of each performer
• Movement acceleration data
• Biometric information including heart rate

This data layer served a dual purpose: creating an immediate technological presence within the performance while generating a comprehensive dataset for future iterations. The recorded information acts as a digital blueprint, allowing us to reconstruct and reinterpret the performance through computational analysis.

This project allowed us to explore a novel approach to human-computer interaction through embodied performance. By inverting traditional AI narratives and exploring themes of machine spirituality, we created space for new conversations about consciousness, and technological development. The integration of live data capture with choreographic expression opened possibilities for performances that evolve through their own technological memory. This work was an exercise in  how speculative design thinking can be applied to movement practice, using the body as a medium for exploring complex philosophical and technological concepts.

‍