RESET

I recently came across a short video by James Crane in which he predicts that people are going to start dancing more. Going out more, listening to live music, spending time together and rediscovering the pleasure of being somewhere rather than experiencing everything through a screen. I found myself thinking about it long after the video ended. Not because dancing has disappeared, but because I think we are approaching a moment when being together will begin to matter in a very different way.

We have spent the last twenty years making almost every part of our lives more convenient, more accessible and more personal. We can communicate with anyone, work from anywhere, listen to anything and experience extraordinary performances without leaving home. Technology has given us remarkable freedom, and artificial intelligence is accelerating this transformation at a speed that is difficult to comprehend. Yet somewhere along the way, we have started to confuse being connected with actually being together.

I don’t think those are the same things.

There is something about sharing a physical space that technology still cannot replace. The atmosphere before a performance begins, the energy of an audience responding to the same moment, the unexpected conversation with a stranger, the experience of hearing music and feeling everyone around you respond to it. None of these things needs to be extraordinary on its own. What makes them memorable is that they happen between people, in a particular place, at a particular moment.

Having spent much of my life working with dance, performance, culture and live experiences, I have always been interested in this relationship between people and space. But I also think our industry has become increasingly preoccupied with everything surrounding the experience rather than the experience itself. Bigger productions, more sophisticated technology, immersive environments, extraordinary visual effects. We have become exceptionally good at creating things for people to look at. I’m not entirely sure we have become equally good at creating reasons for people to connect.

This is where I think the next important shift will happen.

As artificial intelligence makes content easier to produce and almost every visual idea technically achievable, the value of the physical experience will change. Not because people will reject technology, but because technology will make us more conscious of what it cannot reproduce. A live performance is never exactly the same twice. An audience changes the atmosphere of a room. A dancer responds to another body, a musician reacts to the energy around them, and an unexpected moment can become the most memorable part of an entire evening. These things are difficult to predict, impossible to repeat precisely and perhaps more valuable because of it.

I have been thinking about RESET in relation to the creative industries for some time. At CPM İstanbul, our relationship with technology began changing significantly when we started using AI as part of the creative process, rather than simply as a tool for making presentations. During our work around the centenary celebrations of İşbankası in 2023, we began exploring how environments imagined with AI could actually be designed, produced and experienced in the physical world. For me, the interesting part was never simply generating an image. It was understanding how something imagined digitally could become real, how people would move through it, and what they would feel when they were actually there.

That experience changed the way I thought about the relationship between creativity and technology. But looking at where we are today, I think the more important change is still ahead of us.

We have spent years asking what else technology will allow us to create. I am increasingly interested in asking why we are creating it in the first place. Does it bring people together? Does it create a meaningful encounter? Does it leave something behind beyond a photograph, a social media post or a moment of attention?

These are not new questions, but I think they are becoming much more relevant.

There is also a contradiction worth recognising. Brands have become very interested in communities, belonging and shared experiences, but almost everything now seems to come with a commercial objective. Every gathering becomes an activation, every interaction becomes engagement, every audience becomes a potential consumer. I understand the business behind it; I have worked in that world for decades. But I wonder whether we sometimes forget that people don’t necessarily want to participate in a brand experience. Sometimes they simply want to participate in life.

And perhaps the brands and cultural institutions that understand this distinction will be the ones that remain relevant.

I don’t believe the future belongs to the largest production, the most immersive installation or the most technologically advanced event. Those things will continue to have their place, and I will always be fascinated by what we can achieve with them. But I suspect the experiences that matter most will be those that make room for something genuine to happen between people, without attempting to control every second of it.

Which brings me back to dancing.

Dancing is one of the simplest forms of collective experience we have. You don’t need to speak the same language, agree on anything or even know the person next to you. For a few minutes, different people share a rhythm and a space. There is no algorithm deciding what each person should feel, no need for everyone to experience the moment in exactly the same way. And yet something happens collectively.

I think we will see more people looking for that feeling, not only in clubs or concerts, but in theatres, public spaces, cultural institutions and the ordinary places where social life happens. I also think this will challenge those of us who design experiences. We may need to spend a little less time thinking about what people will see and a little more time thinking about what will happen between them.

For me, that is what RESET is beginning to mean. Not starting again, not rejecting the technologies that are transforming our world, but reconsidering what we want to do with them. Understanding that making something possible is not the same as making it meaningful.

Perhaps James Crane is right and people really will start dancing more. I hope so. But I think the bigger change will be our growing desire to be present, to participate and to feel part of something beyond ourselves.

We have become very good at designing experiences that people want to photograph. Maybe it is time to create more experiences that people are too involved in to reach for their phones.

And I think that would be a rather good place to start.