For ten days, we will practise creative improvisation with AI systems – in sound, image and video. Each participant will begin with a poem and use it as the starting point for a short audiovisual form. That is the surface of it. Because we will be digging deeper.

The dominant aspect of the current discussion around AI in the audiovisual field is its use as a means of optimising the creative process: making things faster and cheaper. Many creators are integrating artificial intelligence systems into their work because they feel they have to “move with the winds of change”, because they need to “stay in the market”. Even if they do so through gritted teeth.

At the same time, work created with AI is met with entirely understandable reluctance, and sometimes even ostracism, from audiences. Some see longer film formats as a possible answer to this problem, arguing that longer works may allow for deeper emotional engagement on the part of the audience and for a more rigorous production process. Others are looking for a different kind of relationship with the viewer that AI might enable. Still others are placing their bets on spectacular effects.

Within this exploratory group, we will try to follow another path, one that is still rarely taken today: how can we interact with these systems not in order to imitate existing forms, but to use them to create new qualities that would not be possible without their participation?

The key here is to move away from treating AI purely as a tool and towards creative exploration. Improvisation – as with a musical instrument – offers a chance to move beyond habitual patterns and familiar modes of interacting with a system. Poetry allows us to step away from the most obvious narrative and visual conventions and to search for forms capable of producing new qualities. This is precisely why a poem will serve as the foundation of our exploration.

I do not know the answer. I do not know whether this is the right path. But I somehow naively believe that AI contains an enormous and almost entirely unexplored potential. Much like cinema did more than a hundred years ago, before it found its own language – when it still thought of itself as little more than a recording of a theatrical performance.

But there is another side to this question.

Working with AI, where virtually anything can be produced or generated, forces the creator to ask two fundamental questions with every press of the Enter key: “why?” and “what for?”

Why this and not something else? Why this way and not another? What is the point? What does it bring to me and to others?

In our group, we will try to develop the habit of persistently asking these questions, because this is one of the few ways of avoiding the production of yet more AI slop.

I invite everyone who has enough contrarian spirit to try to prove – even in just a few shots – that something of value can be extracted from AI. I invite those who are looking for friction and resistance in AI, rather than the easy way out.

Bring a poem with you.

One that will not leave you alone.

Sloppy Territory

Sloppy Territory is a series of informal screenings of potentially decent films – works that have been noticed and appreciated – generated with the help of AI systems.

After each short film, we’ll talk about what we found interesting, what felt weak, where there may be genuine value or discovery, and where there is only the appearance of value.

Just to be clear: I haven’t seen these films yet either. They simply come with a kind of stamp of approval – from festivals, galleries, critics or audiences. Let’s watch them together and see what that approval actually means, and whether we can recognise the value ourselves.

The format will be simple: after each film, we’ll spend five minutes talking and then move on. Everyone can say what they think, what worked for them and what didn’t. It will be interesting to see what emerges from looking at this broader landscape together.

During the session, everyone is free to come and go whenever they like.

Each meeting will last two hours – or until the audience runs out.

Jacek Nagłowski

Organisational note: during the group sessions, selected AI tools will be used for demonstration purposes. Access to the tokens provided by the organiser will remain at the disposal of the Group Mentor and will be used exclusively for joint demonstrations.

To participate in the Artificial Intelligence Group in AV media, please sign up for the Film Spring Open Workshop, which will be held from 13-22.10.2026 in Krakow!

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