Bill: I come in today as a dancing human.
My collaborator is a machine
that doesn't really know what a dancing human is.
Mutaurwa: So, this project came about,
and I guess it's so much more of an experiment than a project
because we don't know what is about to happen here
or what we're going to get out of this.
But, you know, we wanted to see what would happen
when you put someone like Bill,
a National Medal of the Arts honoree,
a MacArthur fellow, a two-time Tony winner --
What happens when you put a technology like PoseNet
in the hands of an artist of that caliber.
Malika: When I think about Bill, he is a giant among us.
He changed everything that we know around modern dance,
around the braiding together of dance and political speech --
and not in a traditional way,
but in a way that turned everything upside-down.
Maya: PoseNet is a machine- learning model that estimates
where key points are on your body,
like where your elbow is, for example.
What's exciting is we took this huge machine-learning model
and made it lightweight enough to run in your browser,
which means that no images ever leave your machine.
You can use it anywhere you want --
in a dance studio, in your living room.
And also, you don't need to wear any special sensors
or use any special hardware.
It's all totally on your computer.
-With these workshops, we just want to explore
if there is a way that you feel like your movement
could plug in.
Bill: And we're with you.
My whole life has been about
trying to treat the body like a photographic image.
That's something I borrowed from Arnie Zane,
and something we borrowed from independent cinema
in the late '60s and '70s.
It's even in the name of the thing -- "PoseNet," right?
-Yeah. Bill: It's about poses,
you know, as opposed to...
Bill: Good morning.
The test was as I expected.
We're now just doing rhythm.
[ Rhythmic clapping ]
I don't know why they're --
to my mind, they're very different movers.
But they all look the same.
-Right.
Bill: Okay.
Huh. [ Chuckles ]
Bill: Is there a way to tell the dots
that each one has to have another word?
-We could have it go word, word, word, word, word, word, word
as this whole sentence. -Yes.
-Yeah. Bill: And then it would have
that movement that we were talking about.
-Yeah. Bill: I like this.
Maya: The tools you were using were so simple and basic,
but it was her embodiment of them.
Bill: Well, that's what I was trying to get at
with the dot on Christina's nose.
-Yeah. -How do you get that to be
weighted with meaning and import.
-Right. Janet: Let the tools teach us
and open our minds, and have a dialogue that way.
I think that's an important thing, too.
-Maybe it's ego that I want to be the one
to know how they make those dots make somebody cry.
Maya: During the workshops, we came with these pre-made prototypes.
But Bill often wanted to try something new
or something totally different, so we ended up live-changing
a lot of different pieces of the prototypes in the workshops.
Coding in the moment was... scary but exciting.
♪♪
Malika: How do we take A.I. as an opportunity
of recreating relationships of power?
I think we're in a place where we are at a crossroads
to see how, in fact, will A.I. be used.
Bill: So, Maya. -Yeah.
Bill: I think for me right now, I'm still trying to see
that simple point of contact
between a real body and the prototype.
And that's what I'm trying to figure out.
What is there that I brought three dancers --
a woman, two men, one black man who might feel close to my body.
And they are all articulate,
and they can also make relationships in space.
Just keep your arm behind you -- behind you, please.
Arm behind you.
But now what we just learned here is that
if we want to have articulate sentences,
they have to be quite far away from the camera.
Can I have you guys' attention, please?
The first one is all about hands up here.
The next one, maybe, it is the -- it's here.
It's in the middle of the body.
The third one, it's only people moving across low.
And we have boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
End of the first idea.
I truly would like to see them actually working like dancers --
working like thinking people with their bodies.
-Yes.
-Therefore, I'm giving them problems.
Vinson: I am trying to fit into his history,
even though I haven't experienced,
like, a fraction of the things that he has, you know?
Huiwang: The work he chooses to do has his uniqueness
but also has something shared and around with his interests
in gender-role, identity.
-He draws content from his history and from his background.
There's space in his process for every kind of person.
-Cut. Bill: You know enough
about my work, that I'm a famous improvisor with speaking.
-Yes. -So, can that --
could it ever work with me improvising freely?
Maya: As...I'm...talking...
the words...that...I say...
appear...above me, or...not me, the dancer.
-William Burroughs said, "Language is a virus."
[ Laughter ]
-What's that, Christina?
To steal it from people.
Bill: Yeah, I understand.
[ Laughter ]
[ Music playing ]
-So, if she turns away, the sound will go out.
[ Music cuts out ]
Janet: If we're imposing those two ideas together,
then we want to be more intentional
about where we are -- where to hold and pause
so we can control the switches more.
Bill: We have ended up, at the end of the day,
using this as the canvas. -Right. Yeah.
-Yep. Bill: But it took us a while
to really understand that's what we're doing.
This is going to be taking us
to the end of this century, and important...
is supposed to be happening with this
when you put it in the hands of people.
Maya: This project stands out to me because it demonstrates
how PoseNet can be used
in a way that feels very meaningful and very conceptual,
and I haven't seen that with a lot of other projects
that involve machine learning, or PoseNet specifically.
♪♪
Malika: I think it's also important
that we be able to center our artists, right?
And especially as a tech company,
the importance of understanding
that our artists are our place of humanity.
Bill: I'm known for talking solos.
This is what I do, and I've been doing it for 30 years.
Do you want to have Bill T. Jones doing it?
And hear the way Bill T. Jones says the words?
-Yes. Bill: Well, then we should have
the microphone on, then.
"21" was a solo that I made when I was an artist
in residence at Kent School for Boys in 1983.
It came out of a class that I sat in on.
Someone said offhandedly, "Oh, when you're dancing,
you're not thinking. Of course."
And I was a bit incensed by that.
♪♪
The Italian Renaissance.
Contrapposto.
David. Muhammad Ali.
I am the greatest. To the groin.
Eek! A mouse!
You're so vulnerable. You pretend you're tough.
You're so vulnerable.
Nude.
I feel naked here in this room.
All these eyes looking.
And art-deco. Mouth hidden.
Mouth is always running.
Eyes are looking.
New York Yankees. Wind up.
Apollo. Apollo Belvedere.
Adam.
The first man.
Adam.
The first woman.
You go to Hell.
Always personal.
The black body is what I wear.
So we don't even have to say it, right?
This is a black thinking body, right?
That's trying to get these bodies
to be an extension of my body,
and it's frustrating as hell because I have a huge ego,
and time is taking its toll.
But that's why we're here together, right?
Alright, so, what do you want to do?
-Every day, I play the game and cheat the system.
Every now and then, I...up and get caught.
And still, I'll try it again.
-Hey!
[ Rhythmic clapping ]
Huiwang: Do you hear me?
Bill: You pay us great compliment
by speaking the language we speak.
And you have a very strong Chinese identity.
And I would like to be able to actually know
the other man, as well.
[ Speaking in Mandarin ]
Janet: "Why are you asking if I'm afraid of blood?"
[ Speaking in Mandarin ]
Janet: And they told me, "It's a girl."
-Whoo!
[ Applause ]
Bill: Okay, thank you. Why are you applauding?
-That was awesome.
Bill: You felt emotion. You're emotionally engaged.
-Yep. Bill: Okay.
That's what we're going for, right?
Maya: As a dancer and a technologist,
there wasn't a lot of overlap
between me dancing or, you know, me coding,
and with this project, one of the most exciting things
is that it's this example
of how you can use new technologies in combination
with other art forms or other mediums of expression.
♪♪
Bill: How much should one give to the Internet?
How how can you dare give of yourself?
As I change and get older,
maybe I'm not as brazen as I used to be. Maybe I'm more.
Malika: Remembering what he looked like on that stage
almost 20 years ago, and then watching him now
trying to interact with this new technology,
I think the ambivalence that he gives voice to
is the ambivalence that so many of us feel.
Bill: Arnold Schwarzenegger. Austrian Oak.
The first bodybuilder that many gay men were allowed
to look at without guilt, because he was without guilt.
Janet: I feel like we're just beginning to know
what these tools that we were playing with can do,
and I think of them as maybe more than tools.
They are more like, hm, collaborators.
Vinson: I dance because other black boys aren't allowed to dance.
Bill: I've never really collaborated with a machine before.
Where is the truth of gravity?
Time? Space?
Sweat? Effort?
It's a whole other learning curve.
It's hard on the ego,
but good on one's sense of love for humanity.
Janet: I trust there are these artists/technologists out there
that will continue developing it.
And I think that everyone can play with something
that's readily available in their homes,
and then maybe use it in a performance,
use it in a 3-D space
and not just in front of their monitors at home.
Malika: I have spent my entire human-rights career
focusing on the power of culture and narrative.
It feels full circle to be able to see Bill T. Jones
in our space, and us in his space.
Bill: I just had a wonderful with -- What's --
-Malika. Bill: And they were saying,
"You realize what we want you to do
is run up against the obstacles.
We want to know what's not working."
-So, which mic is this? -Number two.
Maya: I hope that people are able to explore
language and movement and, on the development side,
people see all the possibilities of things
that they can create that are more unconventional,
or move into uncharted terrain.
Bill: Thank you all very much.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The next frontier for machine learning is context.
That seems paramount to art-making.
So, will I use it more in the future?
Having said those things, I'm wondering,
am I able to think in the future?
If not Bill T. Jones,
there's somebody already who is doing that.
Now, can they make me cry?
♪♪