Bodies in Hyperreality at Jacob’s Pillow Dance: Dancing the Algorithm

Dancing the Algorithm, a Festival 2025 exhibition, invited audiences to move, play, and explore the emerging ways technology shapes our experience of embodiment. We don’t just use technology—we wear it, speak to it, and even dance with it. It anticipates our desires, becoming an interlocutor in our becoming. Through immersive, interactive installations, this exhibition was a meditation on movement in the algorithmic age, observing the dissolving boundaries between physical and virtual, human and machine, performer and spectator. Here, the dancing body doesn’t just adapt to technology—it shapes it, challenges it, and celebrates the new choreographic possibilities it can create. - Curated by Katherine Helen Fisher‍

Click here to access the digital program

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Consulting / Lead Creative Technologist - Dancing the Algorithm
I served as the consulting and lead creative technologist, guiding equipment specification, network architecture, and system reliability for the exhibition. I built a Python-based remote monitoring service with Discord webhooks for real-time alerts, and led on-site installation, calibration, and live debugging. Throughout the run, I delivered iterative creative improvements, handled troubleshooting, and maintained the system for consistent performance. The exhibition received coverage in both print and digital outlets of New York Times (Arts), and online articles of Forbes, and the Observer.

Co-Artist — “Bodies in Hyperreality”
As a co-artist, I designed and developed the interactive installation “Bodies in Hyperreality,” presented on StandardVision’s Clear Canvas in collaboration with Shimmy Boyle and Katherine Helen Fisher. The system integrates TouchDesigner with StreamDiffusion and our fine-tuned LoRA models, trained on a custom dataset from the Jacob’s Pillow Archives, with special thanks to Norton Owen and Patsy Gay, connected via WebSocket services to a custom HTML/CSS/JavaScript web app. Curated prompts from the archives team and a QR-enabled interface invite audiences to submit their own prompts in real time, engaging with dance history through generative AI while reflecting on the biases inherent in emerging technologies.

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Official Promotional Video:

Thumbnail photo by Jamie Kraus

Video by Nel Shelby Productions

Directed by Nel Shelby and Katherine Helen Fisher

Videographers: Taylor Hutchison, Nel Shelby, Ashli Bickford

Editor: Sydney Samson

Production Assistants: Solana Armatage, Josephine Willman, Cat Caruncho

Music by Josh Kadish / vviota

Filmed at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival

Featuring work by Memo Akten, Lauren Bedal, Shimmy Boyle, Mingyong C., Kiani Del Valle, entroplay (Armon Naeini), Katherine Helen Fisher, Nora Gibson, Hamill Industries (Pablo Barquin and Anna Diaz), David Wallace Haskins, Katie Peyton Hofstadter, KAMBARA+ (Yayoi Kambara), Kate Ladenheim, Operator (Ania Catherine and Dehja Ti), Daniel Sierra, Cameron Surh, Kianí Del Valle, Alan Winslow, and Xin Ying.

The score for the interactive exhibit space is composed by Josh Kadish / Vviota.

Exhibition Designer: Laura DiRado

Artistic Director: Pamela Tatge

Associate Artistic Director: Kim Chan

With support from the Doris Duke Foundation, Google Artists and Machine Intelligence Faculty Research Award, the Barnard Movement Lab, a TSOA Dean’s Faculty Grant, and StandardVision Studios.

Special thanks to Jacob’s Pillow Staff: Jason Wells, Alexa Zanikos, Hunter Styles, Jared Fine, Nick Kepley, Patsy Gay, Sumi Matsumoto, Norton Owen, Nick Kepley, Nick Kowerko, Lila Kanner, David Imani, Nel Shelby, Taylor Hutchison, Sidney Samson, Amy Jacobus, Kat Sirico, Ethan Eldred, Derek Keifer, KB (Klara Ballay), Phoebe West, Alice Jenkins, Ryan Walters, Sean Buenaventura, Casper Apodaca, Kaileykielle Hoga, and Erica Feagin.