AI Film Jam: Improvisation, Flow, and Posthuman Co-Creation in AI Filmmaking

Over the past two years, there has been a rapid proliferation of AI film hackathons: short, intensive events in which filmmakers collaborate to produce AI-generated films within compressed timeframes. Borrowed from software-development culture, these formats often reproduce a “move fast and break things” mentality that prioritises speed, efficiency, competition and product, while offering little space for reflection or embodiment.

My proposal takes a different approach. In 2014, I developed a practice of improvised filmmaking within dance Contact Improvisation Jams, producing thirteen short dance films conceived, shot, edited and screened within two-hour sessions. While the finished films were often compelling, the process was consistently exhilarating, playful, and immersive—a state defined as “flow” (Csikszentmihalyi). This method later informed my teaching practice when screendance students joined me in creating improvised films inside live dance environments.

Drawing from this lineage, the AI Film Jam is conceived as a new pedagogical format for creative collaboration with AI models. Rather than approaching AI filmmaking through optimisation or accelerated production, the Jam applies improvisational principles from dance, theatre, and music to a two-day collective creative process. Its design is guided by qualities identified by Midgelow (8-14), such as irreversibility, receptivity, and emergent construction, which describe improvisation as a “way of going about things”. Research on technology-enabled theatre improvisation further demonstrates how digital systems can facilitate flow states (Branch). Central to the event design is a posthuman understanding of flow not solely as a human psychological state, but as emerging from an assemblage of humans, AI systems, interfaces, and materials. For this reason, the AI Film Jam proposes to integrate embodied warm-ups, collaborative tech troubleshooting, receptive prompt-building, shared insights, and reflective pauses, fostering conditions for mindful creativity and supporting participants in navigating the intensities of AI filmmaking.

In the video presentation, I will discuss the design and realisation of the first AI Film Jam at Central Saint Martins (February 2026), reflect on the process and screen one of the short films created during the event. The talk positions the Jam as a model for posthuman creative pedagogy grounded in improvisation, embodied awareness, and human-nonhuman collaboration.