Cyber Subin (2024)

About Cyber subin

Cybernetics (English): A transdisciplinary concept of how living and non-living systems steer themselves through closed-loop sensing and actuation (the act of the machine working).  It is through the idea of a closed-loop feedback, one can learn to steer and control itself. The idea of cybernetics is also present in the human body: the relationship between glucose and insulin, where one regulates the other, as a physiological example.

Subin (Thai): Dream

In a renowned passage of the epic Ramayana, the demon king Ravana (also known as Thotsakan) grapples with the haunting specters of his dreams. Bibhek, Ravana’s brother and a shaman, interprets these dreams as omens of impending apocalyptic battle that threatens to plunge the demonic realms into oblivion. Enraged by Bibhek’s interpretation, Ravana expels Bibhek from the kingdom, pushing him to become an ally with Prince Rama, which eventually results in Ravana’s demise.

The cautionary tale of heeding a premonition holds significant relevance in our modern era, particularly with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). Bibhek’s foretelling of destruction facing the demons resonates deeply as it mirrors the formidable prospect of AI overshadowing human artistic creativity and spirit. Instead of casting aside this complex, perilous vision, choreographer Pichet Klunchun, and technological shaman Pat Pataranutaporn, an MIT scientist, with an interdisciplinary team, embark upon a reinterpretation of this dream, proposing an alternate path where humankind could have a symbiotic relationship with machines in a cybernetics manner, cultivating a novel form of contemporary dance.

In Cyber Subin, the artist’s dream presents a glimpse of how tradition can thrive in the contemporary world, where machines, humans, legends, and myths intermingle. This marks a new chapter in Klunchun’s “No. 60 Principle” as he applies his six choreographic elements, extracted from Thai traditional movements (Energy, Circles & Curves, Axis Points, Synchronous Limbs, External Body Spaces, and Shifting Relations), to cybernetic theory. The six elements are also used to formulate an algorithm that deconstructs and reconstructs traditional movements in an embodied avatar that could dance alongside the human dancer.  Hence, the choreography occurs outside and together with the human body. 

Klunchun focuses on how human dancers can utilize the six principles in reacting and re-negotiating their humanity with the output from machines that respond to their bodies in real-time through sensors on stage. The influence of the machine on the dancer and the dancer’s influence on the machine, forming a cybernetic loop, prompts inquiry into the future of the human spirit. Cyber Subin invites the audience to ponder and explore whether humans have true freedom in the cybernetic system, how a human-machine assemblage could be more than the sum of its parts, and what role technology plays in reimagining cultural heritage and traditional art.

As the world restlessly moves into the future, the introduction of cybernetics to Thai traditional performance shifts the idea of cultural preservation to cultural innovation, presenting new dreams for artists and technologists to work in harmony.