Wayne was interested in creating a new dialogue with his archive during this year, his 25th year of the company, and he was interested in the possibilities of AI as a physical thinking tool in a dance context.

This led to the creation of a new AI driven choreography tool developed by Google Arts and Culture Lab for Wayne to use as seed language for a new dance work in 2019.

The project was boundary-breaking for dance as it is a medium that is purely physical and within the body. By using AI we can create new connections between technology/AI and movement, transforming and elevating the creative possibility for choreographers and everyone alike.

Google Arts&Culture approached Wayne who has a lifelong interest in science and technology which has been integral to many of his creative processes, fuelling choreography mined from radical inter-disciplinary collaborations.

Living Archive provides a new dialogue for artists, creative technologists and engineers to explore new ways technology can be used in the creative process, creation of work and how audiences access and experience culture.

The collaboration started with a conversation between Wayne and the Lab around two years ago. And several iterations of the tool were developed over the last year – in collaboration with Wayne McGregor and his studio.

GA&C Lab used the full stack of Machine Learning tools at Google. What we created is heavily based on Google Cloud. We used Tensorflow to create our prediction model; Google Storage & Cloud compute to process the training date; ML engine for the training; App Engine for the frontend, and Kubernetes, which allows the tool to work in real time.

Further strands of the project will launch this year, including a series of learning and engagement workshops for community groups in East London, , allowing non-professionals and non-dancers to also use the tool as a creative stimulus.

The tool was specifically crafted for McGregor and hasn't been fully shared with the public yet. Its impact lies in the opportunities it opened up to bring technologies such as Machine Learning and artists together to foster even more creativity.

From a PR perspective, this exclusive and professional partnership with Wayne was featured in WIRED and received a FWA award.