Workshop Activities and Schedule Saturday 3rd October

The workshop runs for a full day.

Session 1 — Welcome, Framing, and Participant Introductions (09:30–11:00). 

The workshop opens with a welcome from the organisers, an overview of the day’s goals and schedule, and a brief introduction to dissonance and the three initial categories. The generative AI tools and systems available to participants will be demonstrated. Participants then introduce themselves through a short statement about their creative practice and their relationship to. generative technologies. This session establishes the range of experiences and backgrounds in the room and prepares participants to form interdisciplinary groups for the making sessions.

Session 2 — Collaborative Creation (11:30–13:00). 

Participants form small groups to develop short performance pieces with generative AI tools. Organisers will be available to support the technical setup and collaborate. Groups are asked to attend to moments of instability: outputs that arrive late or in unexpected forms, loss of timing, shifts in who is guiding the work, or surprising alignment between human and machine.

Session 3 — Performance Session (14:00–15:30).

 Groups perform their pieces to the other workshop attendees. Participants are encouraged to decide in advance how moments of dissonance will be incorporated, amplified, or used in the performance rather than resolved or concealed. Observers are invited to note instances of dissonance as they arise, as material for the reflection session. This approach is informed by prior work on live AI-aided performance and computational improvisation,  where creative value often emerges through negotiation rather than control alone.

Session 4 — Collective Reflection and Wrap-up (16:00–17:30). 

Guided reflection on moments of dissonance across conceptual, embodied, and collaborative dimensions. Groups share observations and discuss what forms of friction emerged, how they were managed or incorporated, and what they reveal about live human-AI creative work. The

session closes by identifying open questions, articulating a provisional shared vocabulary, and exploring opportunities for ongoing collaboration and future workshop iterations.

For those interested, there will be a live performance as part of the conference opening evening.