Often germinating in the Big Tech companies of Silicon Valley, technologies designed to generate human- like speech, text and digital imagery are advancing rapidly. It is not unimaginable that these advancements will spread to encompass human movement and affect societal freedoms or corporeal identities. In response, this research positions dance as a form of resistance to raise questions of human agency in the face of these increasing deployments of digital technologies and artificial intelligences. By using choreography as a mode of inquiry it employs the body to explore how humans may control consent, retaining ownership of their corporeal data, by asking:

• What can dance choreography reveal about AI touching our bodies?

This interdisciplinary, practice-based study sits at the intersection of human-centred computing, contemporary dance, and body-worn technology. The practice-as-research framework employed enabled a hybrid methodology to form, drawing from choreographic, constructivist, ethnographic and autoethnographic methods. A facilitated co-development process executed through a series of practical workshops with professional dance artists supported the development of a choreographic system designed to create new choreographic material and an adaptable, bespoke body-tech exoskeleton. Built using off-the-shelf electronics, the apparatus can remotely communicate sequences of vibration to affect choreographed and improvised movement, exploring new techniques and movement languages. Digital technology developments were reviewed alongside key artistic works, revealing that choreographic tools capable of affecting this creative process through physical contact had not yet been devised for the purposes of investigating future AI impacts. This research argues that the individuality of improvised movements and the personal interpretations of the Graham (technique) contraction embody rebellion against encroaching data capture technologies such as human gait recognition, aimed at the surveillance and capture of human identities.

This research proposes new scholarship in the fields of dance choreography, digital technology, and artistic research in AI, contributing a novel choreographic method. By elevating the body as paramount within its architecture, its performance proposes a framework for integrating artificially intelligent algorithms and bodies, wherein human and AI actors possess agency in the creative decision-making process. The testing carried out during this research forms a journey of discovery and experimentation which aims to benefit industry- and academia-based creative practitioners and researchers who are experiencing the proliferation of AI.