Gaitless (originally titled The Field) is an interactive dance performance that explores how tactics used to evade automated AI surveillance can be transformed into choreography.
The idea for Gaitless emerged from a curious news story: a group of burglars reportedly outsmarted AI-powered security cameras by rolling instead of walking. In doing so, they avoided motion-detection systems trained to recognize human gait. This was not only an act of anti-technological subversion, but also a kind of dance performance. The burglars became accidental dancers. Their improvised movements exposed the limitations of artificial intelligence algorithms.
The paradox of Gaitless lies in the fact that, while participants demonstrate that they are not human in the eyes of AI, they are, in essence, profoundly human—strange, inventive, and creative. The very act of subverting machine perception becomes a choreographic principle.
