The Living Archive is an experiment between Studio Wayne McGregor and Google Arts and Culture - a tool for choreography powered by machine learning - which generates original movement inspired by Wayne's 25-year archive. Part of the tool captures a dancers movement. Analyses it. Then extends it in real time with original material. McGregor’s work that was to be shown in Los Angeles was created by him and his dancers in collaboration with the Tool. Ben Cullen Williams was commissioned to create a video installation for the performance that was also to use the tool - but in different ways.

In order to do this Cullen Williams collaborated closely with the Google arts and culture team. A fifteen-minute piece of AI generated dance code was hijacked visually outputted in different ways. The collaborative team thought that it was important to not limit the visualisation of the dance to things that looked like the human form. So the visualisations ranged from literal code, dot matrix, animated lines, cell-like structures to more recognisable forms. For the performance the video was shown on a large semi transparent LED screen. Cullen Williams felt that it was important to have a strong presence of technology on the stage. It needed to be simultaneously raw and visceral - whist having a fragility to it.