Future Folk

Future Folk: Remixing culture through digital technologies brings together leading choreographers, digital artists, creative technologists, and academics for a day of discussion and exchange. Rebecca Evans (Pell Ensemble, UK) and Chieh-hua Hsieh (Anarchy Dance, Taiwan) are joined by other artistic and academic voices exploring folk, dance and music through digital technologies (AI, motion capture, games and immersive environments). Together, Rebecca and Chieh-hua, will share their work-in-progress from new international collaboration, Field / Zhèn, and explore how AI and dance can be used to preserve, transform, and remix cultural memory. 

Start your day with Donald Shek’s hands-on workshop in AI, movement, and motion capture, with techniques you can immediately apply to your own practice. Then dive deeper in the afternoon as he breaks down the creative techniques driving his practice. 

We’ll also hear from artist–researcher Friendred Peng, who will dive into their groundbreaking research on body movement and algorithmic machines, plus additional speakers to be announced soon.

Through workshops, talks, and panels, Future Folk asks: What happens when folk and digital systems meet? How do stories move across bodies, borders and code? And what are the responsibilities of working with AI in culturally rooted creative practice? This is a vital gathering for anyone interested in the future of performance, heritage, and technology.

Proposed Schedule for the day:

10:00-10:30 : Welcome and networking *coffee, tea provided throughout the day and pastry on arrival

10:30-12:30: WORKSHOP: Transforming movement into ritual through AI.

Join artist Donald Shek for an immersive workshop exploring processional movement, presence, and becoming through AI motion capture. Participants will engage in a collective digital procession inspired by the Hill of Tara, seat of ancient kings, and the solitary hawthorn fairy tree, long regarded as a threshold between this world and the otherworld.

You will be invited to explore gentle, processional forms of movement, which will be video-recorded and translated through AI motion capture into a living digital effector within a 3D environment. This space draws on the myths, rituals, and ceremonial gestures that have shaped the site’s long cultural memory, transforming your movements into part of a shared digital rite.

No dance experience is required, no need to bring any equipment. Participants are encouraged to move in whatever way feels natural, intuitive, or reflective.

What You’ll Get Out of It

• Experience how AI motion capture works and how simple movement can become digital animation.
• Participate in creating a collaborative digital artwork shaped by the group’s gestures and presence.
• Explore movement in a low-pressure, beginner-friendly way—no dance experience needed.
• Learn how myth, place, and technology can blend to inspire new forms of storytelling and performance.

12:30-13:00; Share outcomes of the workshop that participants have generated

13:00-14:00: Lunch (not provided)

14:00-14:30; Field / Zhèn: a new work using AI to generate folk tales from the future

14:30-14:50: Artist talk (TBC)

14:50-15:10: Artist/talk (TBC)

15:10-15:30: Academic talk (TBC)

15:30-16:00: Panel discussion and questions with invited guests

This symposium is supported by co-producers Kakilang. With support from Cecil Sharp House and the English Folk Song and Dance Society.