Body Without Presence #1

This work is inspired by the approach seen in Brazilian artist Analivia Cordeiro’s Computer Dance series, where the human figure is reduced to symbols, acquiring a mechanical impression while merging seamlessly with its surrounding scene. In Japan, the body has long been a vessel of meaning. For example, the summer Bon Odori dance carries a ritualistic role of sending off ancestral spirits. Its choreography emphasizes the movement of the feet over the hands, embodying the symbolic act of “treading the earth to pacify the spirits.” Other gestures, such as “reaping rice,” “scooping water,” or “raising lanterns,” continue to preserve the symbolic language of the body, rooted in agriculture and memorial rites. In this work, such meaningful gestures are reinterpreted as “signs,” following Cordeiro’s perspective. They are then connected with contemporary AI technologies to visualize the transformation and instability of these signs. Using images of Japanese dances such as Awa Odori, Yosakoi, and Bon Odori, I trained AI models in Fluxgym and generated and transformed bodies with ComfyUI (a node-based AI tool). The resulting images betray their original structures of meaning, emerging instead as distorted bodily signs. On TouchDesigner (a node-based visual coding software), these images are further warped over time, dancers dissolve into a single image, ultimately shifting into mechanical existences devoid of meaning. What emerges is an “Body Without Presence,” a mechanical presence in which the human figure has disappeared. It is at once a phantom generated by algorithms and an object upon which we project culture and emotion. Within this process, the artist’s role lies in “decision-making” and “poetic leaps.” By welcoming AI not merely as a tool but as an “other” engaged in the creation of meaning, a co-choreography becomes possible. Distorted signs, transformed bodies, the disappearance of meaning, what new forms of poetry might arise within them? And in what ways might they return to our bodies and imagination?