Read Palladium review by Garth Grimball

Palladium

NOV 1-3, 2024 ODC Theater Annex (3175 17th Street)

In Palladium, Kinetech Arts invites the audience to curate their own experience. This new site-specific work transforms the ODC Annex into an immersive environment with interactive video and dance performances, time-warping projections, live soundscapes, and AI-generated scores —all inspired by the complex and evolving landscape of artificial intelligence. Through Palladium, we explore questions surrounding safety, deception, identity, culture, progress, and agency. 

The title Palladium references both a shiny, silvery-white metal used in jewelry and electronic devices, and the sacred statue of Athena from Greek mythology, said to protect and ensure prosperity for those who possessed it. We ask: Does AI safeguard and benefit everyone, or only those who control it?

Kinetech Arts began experimenting with AI during its residency at ODC Theater in 2018. Our creative process is iterative, constantly evolving through weekly Open Lab sessions where dancers, scientists, technologists, and creatives gather to exchange knowledge and foster community through sustained practice.

In Palladium, you are more than a spectator—you are an active participant. You choose your own path and immerse yourself in the shifting moments of this evolving world. We invite you to reflect on how AI is reshaping not only society but your sense of self. Join us in this playful, thought-provoking journey, where art becomes a space for questioning, discovery, and contemplation.

Palladium is supported by ODC and the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation. 

Ongoing: Kinetech Arts Open Lab

Wednesdays, 7 - 8:15pm (PST)

at ODC Annex 3175 17th Street, San Francisco

Join our weekly meetup of artists and scientists exploring the intersection of art, science and technology. Experimenting across various disciplines, Kinetech Arts Open Lab is an opportunity to try out new ideas and meet with like-minded people to learn about the latest in performance and technology.

Follow us @kinetecharts on instagram. Every Monday, we post the link to register for our Open Lab.

PAST EVENTS

At Mills College at Northeastern University, Oakland CA

DanceHack 2024

DanceHack is an annual coming together of technologists, dancers, choreographers and other like-minded people with the primary goal of exploring and creating new possibilities at the intersection of dance and technology.

This year’s theme, A Body of Work, invites us to reconnect with the human body—its innate technology, physicality, and creativity—in the face of rapid technological advancements.

As we delve into advanced tools like motion capture, physiological data sensors, robotics, and AI, we encourage participants to engage with these innovations in ways that enhance our connection to movement.

What does it mean to be a dancing body in a world in a world of constant change? How can we cultivate practices that fuse dance and technology, empowering rather than overwhelming? In an era of constant innovation, can we move forward with a focus on harmony?

Join us for 3 days of hands-on workshops, serendipitous connections and collaborations — let's hack, move, play, and uncover new ways in which dance and technology converge!

Follow @kinetecharts on Instagram to stay updated with our future events!

October 2023: AURUM

Kinetech Arts’s Aurum (gold in Latin) portrays a modern-day “gold rush” in San Francisco, with the world’s tech capital viewed through the events of 1849. Humanity is in a disruptive transition era analogous to that time of proliferation, as developments in AI are growing exponentially. By reflecting on the gold rush, when greed fueled ecological and human tolls, this project reflects on our place within a delicate ecosystem. This ecosystem includes the intimate relationships between humans and the digital world.

AURUM artists/collaborators: Erin Coyne, Daiane Lopes da Silva, Felicitas Fischer, Kat Lin, Michael Koehle, Sholeh Asgary, Lillian Bickley, Abigail Hinson, Amber Gott, Olesya Elfimova, Patricia Alessandrini, Tessa Nebrida, Weidong Yang and Ye Feng.

Aurum is supported by 836M and ODC Theater

AURUM Program

Kinetech Arts at the Exploratorium on October 21-22

ABOUT San Francisco Trolley Dances

Epiphany’s San Francisco Trolley Dances (SFTD) is an annual festival presented over 3 days along a designated public transit route, FREE of charge. This is a communal experience uniting and highlighting a diverse group of dance artists, helping people see dance in new ways. SFTD connects neighborhoods and participants to San Francisco’s history, culture, architecture, natural environment and social fabric.

DANCEHACK 2023: POST-REALITY

September 15th -17th, 2023 at Mills College at Northeastern University (Oakland)

Y-Exchange

ABOUT THE ARTISTS 🖌️

Margaret Jenkins began her early training in San Francisco at the Peters Wright School of Dance. In the sixties, she moved to New York to study at Juilliard, continued her training at UCLA and returned to New York to dance in many companies including Twyla Tharp's original company with Sara Rudner. In addition, Jenkins was a member of the faculty of the Merce Cunningham Studio and restaged his works around the world. In 1970 Jenkins returned to San Francisco; in 1973, formed the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company. She opened one of the West Coast's first studio-performing spaces and a school for the training of professional modern dancers. In the last five decades, she has created over 90 works on her Company, as well as companies in Japan, India, China and Israel.

An engineer, researcher, and artist, Dr. Catie Cuan is a pioneer in the nascent field of ‘choreorobotics’ and works at the intersection of artificial intelligence, human-robot interaction, and art. She recently defended her PhD in the Mechanical Engineering department at Stanford University, where she completed a Master’s of Science in Mechanical Engineering. The title of her PhD thesis is “Compelling Robot Behaviors through Supervised Learning and Choreorobotics”, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health, Google, and Stanford University. During her PhD, she led the first multi-robot machine learning project at Everyday Robots (Google X) and Robotics at Google (now a part of Google Deepmind). She has held artistic residencies at the Smithsonian, Everyday Robots (Google X), TED, and ThoughtWorks Arts. Catie is a prolific robot choreographer, having created works with nearly a dozen different robots, from a massive ABB IRB 6700 industrial robot to a tabletop IDEO + Moooi robot. Catie is also a 2023 International Strategy Forum (ISF) fellow at Schmidt Futures.