jactynogg zontaanaco: A Contemporary Version of The Blind Men and the Elephant Inspired by Machine Translation and Misreads

jactynogg zontaanaco, appearing at the 2025 Taipei Arts Festival, is the second collaboration between iconic Japanese contemporary performing arts group contact Gonzo and well-known new media artist yang02. In the 2024 Theatre Yearbook, Japan’s international theater society described it as“a profound experiment in future art.” In addition to affirming the creativity that was inspired by exploring human-machine collaboration and its boundaries, it provides an opportunity to think about possibilities for integrating contemporary art forms.

Human and machine variations in translation and misreads

In their first collaboration in 2019, they produced untitled session. Through image annotation technology, they attempted to make use of AI to translate improvised physical movements into text and speech. Interestingly, when AI attempted to use speech to capture improvised physical movements, the generated descriptions often deviated from the actual movements, with some
absurd misreads. It is precisely these “inequalities” or“misalignments” between AI and human perception that challenge our established ideas about language expression, physical performance, and machine reading comprehension. Is it possible for these “misreads” to become part of a work and challenge people’s expectations of machine
reading comprehension? When humans face an unprecedented situation, there is the possibility for chaos. Isn’t that possibility even greater for AI and persons with disabilities?

jactynogg zontaanaco was born from the technical exploration of the“misreading” of physical movements from that previous work, while thinking about the possibilities of transforming such misreads into inclusive art and enabling audiences with different sensory abilities to participate in an artistic experience. During the performance, self-propelled AI machines produced by yang02 record and generate translations in text and speech of the improvised physical movements of and interactions among contact Gonzo members through image annotation technology. A live announcer describes the action, in addition to the AI-generated voices, such that the audience constantly shifts its attention from the visual components of live action and images to the audio components of oral narration.

A contemporary reconstruction of an old tale

As the audience members watch the performance visually, they listen to the AI-generated voices, read the AI-generated surtitles, and even perceive the physicality of the live improvisation. The experiences of different people result in multiple, asynchronous, and even possibly conflicting perception processes. This type of “perception asymmetry” is no longer about
“complete understanding,” which is ultimately impossible. Instead, audience members are encouraged to use their own method of entering this work and their own feelings and experiences to perceive what is happening“live.”

This work, with its meaning of “providing translation for all people”premiered as part of precog Inc’s TRANSLATION for ALL project. It not only attempts to break through the boundaries between speech and the body, but also to declare a vision of inclusivity. Its accessibility was enhanced by the incorporation of barrier-free design concepts and the feedback of people with visual and hearing impairments who were invited to join the creative process and sit in on auditions. It is hoped that more people will
have equal opportunity to experience and understand art. AI translation serves as a bridge of “alternative perception” in this work, enabling persons with visual and hearing impairments to “experience” the performance through text or speech. In this work, the instability of technology, AI algorithmic bias, and the resulting sensory asymmetry are all highlighted.

This contemporary version of the tale The Blind Men and the Elephant uses these to raise awareness of the problems involved in understanding differences with others and the potential to redeem the collective trust mechanisms of different groups.

Creativity under sensory asymmetry

Today, AI permeates our daily lives and social operating mechanisms. It also directly influences global political struggles and economic wars. The world is now actively trying to turn the tide by maximizing technological justice in the face of inequalities in information dissemination and allocation of actions.

However, we cannot rely solely on the goodness that comes upstream of technology. Before resigning ourselves to our fate, it is extremely important that we recreate an escape path from the centralized power of technology using loopholes and gaps in the current mechanisms. Fortunately, forms of artistic transformation that respond to contemporary challenges are leading to creative proposals for escaping the crises of the times.

photo by Yurika Kono