Emerging Bodies, Emerging Systems

kin_ is an exploratory dance work developed as an AR application for mobile devices, engaging with human corporeality as well as body-based art through and with digital technology. The English term „kin" refers to family, lineage, and kinship — suggesting a sense of closeness that this work continuously questions. One to three dancing avatars move through the augmented space of the theatre building and become tangible and experiential through the provided user screens.

In moments of intimacy or in the search for connection and humanity, the avatar dancers sometimes directly involve the audience. Each viewer can influence the unfolding situation through their own movement and interaction, as the avatars respond to proximity and distance. How close do you come?

In the 2026 version, kin_ will be presented both on tablets and via the Apple Vision headset.

Concept & Artistic Direction: Charlotte Triebus; Soundtrack: Brigitta Muntendorf; Digital Costume & Makeup: Inès Alpha; Production & Development: MIREVI.

The immersive 3D installation takes visitors on a digital journey into mysteriously dissolving spaces modelled on a theatre auditorium. As in a lucid dream, you move through a point cloud of the building, encounter ghostly figures on stage, hear voices from past performances and become aware of the fleeting nature of sensory experiences. The dance piece developed for the work deals with logic and control, with distorted and distorting lucid dreams and toxic-transformative dependencies. The background narrative shows excerpts from the play Vom Licht (From the Light) by Anselm Neft.

Concept & development: Laurenz Ulrich x MIREVI, choreography: Charlotte Triebus.

A production of MIREVI (HSD) as part of the research project "Theater of Expanded Realities". Project partners: Theater an der Ruhr and Academy for Theater and Digitality, Dortmund. Funded by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia as part of NEUE WEGE in cooperation with the NRW KULTURsekretariat.

Software demo

This interactive tool lets you create Hydra visuals through a simple graphical interface. By choosing visual inputs and modifiers, a code that is continuously processed by a neural network is generated, producing ever-shifting visual parameters. The resulting code can be applied in real time to transform movements captured by a live camera feed — inviting to explore how algorithms interpret, distort, and reinvent the image.

Source code and artistic direction: Naoto Hieda & Jorge Guevara.
 
Created in the framework of MODINA residency for the SFDCANBAC++ project. MODINA is co-financed by the Creative Europe program of the European Union.

The work lasts approximately 25 minutes, runs in a loop and unfolds in the superimposition of video and XR.
If things continue to fall apart, and fall apart properly, then I wonder how our children's children's children will know what it felt like when things weren't falling apart. What would pictures mean to them if they had never stood on a beach and felt the waves lapping at their feet? What use are moving pictures if those pictures seem to refer only to themselves?
So we set out to capture the world not just as fleeting moments, but as relationships translated into code that could perhaps one day be reactivated in real time."
Clouds, waves, wind, fog, smoke and other forms of turbulence play a crucial role not only in this work, but also fundamentally in immersive art forms such as anime and video games. Although they usually remain peripheral phenomena of perception, they are indispensable vehicles that enable us to enter imaginary worlds. Artists have developed a variety of ways to simulate them, drawing on the latest developments in technology and science, and in doing so, advancing them. Although they are often based on scientific models, they are only concerned with illusion, with the balance between precision and computing time, with doing just enough to evoke familiar sensations in foreign worlds.

By: Norbert Pape, Sound and music: Franziska Aigner, Text: Ben Woodard, Voices (in order of appearance): Norbert Pape, Göksu Kunak, Ben Woodard, Kyra Kaisla, Pêdra Costa, Spiritual guidance: Pêdra Costa, Technical development: Norbert Pape, Simon Speiser, SFX and XR implementation: Norbert Pape.

With the support of Beyond Gravity / Theater im Depot Dortmund and the Moovy Dance Film Festival. Funded by the Ministry of Culture and Science of North Rhine-Westphalia as part of the Neue Künste Ruhr programme.

Participatory AI installation

The Mirror of Hope is more than just a mirror: it does not show the present as it is, but interprets how it could be. AI transforms the live camera image into a visual reflection – influenced by a single word or a short message that steers the reflection in a utopian direction.
The Mirror of Hope invites visitors to play: they can use buttons to select inspiring terms and the knobs to adjust aspects such as the influence of the AI or the age of the person. Each selection changes the reflection – immediately, visibly, poetically. The image remains alive: it flickers, breathes, transforms, as if the mirror continues to think, even when the scene stands still. This creates a space for playful thinking about the future. 
If even a machine can create images of hope, why can't we?

Concept: MIREVI; Development: Philipp Dilchert.

Participatory AI installation

Gaitless is an interactive dance space exploring anti-surveillance and anti-AI tactics as choreographic concepts.
The idea came from a peculiar news story: a group of bank robbers allegedly outwitted AI-powered security cameras by rolling instead of walking – bypassing motion detection systems trained to recognize human gait. It was a subversive act of evasion, but also, in an unexpected way, a dance performance. The robbers were accidental dancers. Their improvised movements exposed the flaws in AI perception.
The paradox of Gaitless is that participants, in proving they are in the eyes of AI not human, prove they in fact are human – strange and creative.
Drawing from historical precedents like the Dazzle camouflage of WWI, Adam Harvey’s "CV Dazzle", and authors´ previous project "Tactical Poetics" – as well as the evasive tactics of Serbian anti-Ottoman outlaws and Yugoslav antifascist partisans – Gaitless extends the lineage of aesthetics born out of strategy and tactics.

Concept and Direction: Uroš Krčadinac & Marko Milić x MIREVI; Creative Development and Support: Ivana Družetić-Vogel, Patrick Kruse, Ben Fischer; Multimedia Software Development: Ben Fischer; Music: Kӣr.

Created in the framework of MODINA project. MODINA is co-financed by the Creative Europe program of the European Union.