Marie-Claude Poulin is a transdisciplinary researcher, digital artist, choreographer-performer and movement specialist whose work explores the combination of body-based performance and new technologies. At the University for Applied Arts Vienna, Marie-Claude is researcher at the Department of Media Theory and Senior Artist at the Department of Digital Arts, where she has taught performance since 2013. She collaborates in international research projects that focus on choreography, somatics, and performance in relation to virtual environments, artificial intelligence and robotics: European Mobile Dome Lab for Artistic Research – E/M/D/L (EU Cultural Program, 2014–16, co-initiator); Digital Synesthesia (PEEK / FWF, 2013–2016, guest artist-researcher); Machine learning and A.I. for creation (CALQ, 2018–2019, co-leader); and Dancing with the Nonhuman (PEEK / FWF, 2019–2022, co-investigator).

Marie-Claude trained in dance and kinanthropology at Université du Québec à Montréal and earned an M.A. in Choreography at the Inter-University Centre for Dance (HZT, Berlin). From 1985 to 2000, she taught somatic education and performed contemporary dance works, notably for Benoît Lachambre and Meg Stuart. In 2000, she co-founded, with media artist Martin Kusch, the artistic company kondition pluriel (www.konditionpluriel.org).

She has developed an artistic research approach that she describes as “technosomatic”, a hybridyzing compositional methodology generating autopoietic body-machine dialogues. Her work interweaves the bodies of performers as an interface linking digital systems and audio-visual environments. It combines improvisation-notation techniques, motion analysis, digital visualization, programming rules, and modes of collaborative user interaction, with an overall leitmotiv of the investigation of body consciousness.

Marie-Claude has received numerous individual research and creation grants in dance, media arts, multidisciplinary and inter-arts sectors and is frequently invited to participate in juries and committees. Her works are featured in publications and presented at venues such as Ars Electronica, CYNETart, Dance Umbrella / ICA London, Experimental Performing Arts Centre (EMPAC), International Festival of New Dance (FIND), International Symposium for Electronic Arts (ISEA), MAK Museum Wien, Munich Dance festival, Museumsquartier Wien, Society for Arts and Technology [SAT], Transmediale, Mois Multi, Robot Love Eindhoven, and ZKM | Centre for Art and Media.