A research programme is setting out to evaluate how digital technologies could be used to support remote learning in performing arts.
A multidisciplinary research team, led by Queen Mary University of London, will be investigating the potential for AI to train skills at home, including refined movements, synchrony and self-evaluation, which are normally difficult to teach in remote settings.
They will also be developing AI tools that will give dancers individual and immediate feedback on their movement in the absence of in-person teaching.
The project will bring together scientific experts and leading dance schools including English National Ballet School and Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. Students participating in the project will be taught remotely by choreographer and dance teacher Erico Montes.
Data-driven algorithms will be used to compare the movements of a student with those of the choreographer, to identify what they are doing differently and what they need to do to correct their performance. The aim is to use the algorithm to evaluate movement, such as whether a student is moving early or late, and how they articulate limbs and other parts of the body.
The involvement of the University’s Centre for Sports and Exercise Medicine will share knowledge more widely to offer benefits to distance learning in sports and physiotherapy.
Professor Andrea Cavallaro, Professor of Multimedia Signal Processing at Queen Mary University of London and Director of the Centre for Intelligent Sensing, said: “Often we think of the arts and technology being in competition, but through this project we hope to show how technology, and specifically AI, could actually be used to enhance the arts.”