A look back at the Humanités Numériques IV international symposium

Organized by Amos Fergombé and Nikoleta Kerinska as part of the IaSKENE project, this symposium bringing together artists and researchers from Belgium, the USA, Switzerland, China and France, explored how artificial intelligence (AI) redefines the representation and perception of the body, particularly in the performing arts, performances and digital environments. The poster, mixing translucent bodies, equations and virtual reality, summed up this hybridization between human and technology, the central theme of the exchanges.

The talks showed that AI doesn't just imitate the body: it reconfigures it, simulates it, and makes it an object of creation and questioning. Among the key ideas:

• The stage reinvented: Projects such as La Kellynoïde (C. Plessiet & K. Mézino) or VR performances (Rôles de danse) illustrate how AI becomes a creative partner, blurring the boundaries between human actor and artificial agent (X. Lambert, S. Coulibaly).
• Ethics in question: debates focused on the risks (Roger F. Malina) of dehumanization, but also on opportunities to reinvent corporeality (B. Andrieu, A. Ait El Cadi, Chu-Yin Chen,). AI questions our relationship to life, death and identity.
• New dramaturgies: Algorithms enable unprecedented stage writing (A. Helbo, L. Bazin, Jean-Baptiste Richard, A. Masoura, X. Boissarie, C. Hoffmann, D. Zea), where the body becomes a malleable medium, between living matter and digital artifact.