Hybrid Agencies
Created by MASARY Studios

2022 - Museum of Science Boston

Corporations like Facebook, Google, Uber, and Baidu use AI technologies to deliver targeted advertisements, search engine results, product recommendations; to develop self-driving cars; to perform image recognition; and to build “smart assistants” like Siri and Alexa. These technologies are also used for monitoring bank accounts, pre-screening loan applications, grading students, predictive policing, and sentencing recommendations in the criminal justice system. AI technologies are continuously being integrated into our lives and actions.

MASARY Studios, in collaboration with New York-based choreographer Mike Esperanza, presents “Hybrid Agencies,” which investigates how state-of-the-art machine learning and AI technologies can represent the human body and movement, as well as the ways that such systems misrepresent or fail to represent the human body. The three-part event started by inviting guests to enact some facets of these technologies before the dance performance featuring original sound score and AI-generated video by MASARY's Ryan Edwards and Jeremy Stewart, PhD.

Following the premiere, guests joined Stewart for a conversation and presentation that introduced how these technologies work and how we might begin to think about them in light of their omnipresence and fast growth and development, through the lens of creative practices and art making.

Presented at the Museum of Science, Boston
Choreography by Mike Esperanza
Dancers: Haley Day, Hassan Booth, Meg Anderson