Workshop on Co-Creative Human-AI Futures for Heritage Performing Arts

PI: Dr. Alexandra Huang-Kokina, Prof. Daniel Hjorth, Jesper Larsson

Co-I: Prof. Sami Brandt, Prof. Mikko Sams, Prof. Roberto Verganti, Prof. Ana Alacovska, Ass. Prof. Emma Nordbäck, Ass. Prof. Ana Nordberg, Prof. Erik Larsson, Dr. Aurelija Lukoseviciene

How to participate

The first workshop will take place at Malmö Opera on 7-8 October 2026. We welcome expressions of interest from prospective collaborators (please note that only a very small number of spaces are available). To join the network, please contact us at: alexandra [dot] huang-kokina [at] fek [dot] lu [dot] se (alexandra[dot]huang-kokina[at]fek[dot]lu[dot]se) and daniel [dot] hjorth [at] fek [dot] lu [dot] se (daniel[dot]hjorth[at]fek[dot]lu[dot]se)

Outline

This Nordic Workshop series brings together key actors across the opera ecosystem; leading opera houses and companies, technologists, producers, researchers, independent artists, as well as business school researchers in creativity, entrepreneurship and innovation. Together, we will explore how immersive technologies and human-centred AI might foster creativity-led innovation in the live/performing arts, while critically examining their human and social consequences.

Research areas

This workshop series investigates the opportunities and risks of immersive and AI systems in the performing arts, organised around three interrelated areas of enquiry:

· Organization and trust: How do AI-assisted workflows reconfigure creative control and organization among artists, audiences and algorithmic systems? How might human–AI interfaces foster trust, empathy and community-building rather than alienation and defensive self-protection among users and creators?

· Participation and co-creation: How can emerging immersive production technologies enable meaningful forms of co-creation, allowing audiences to shape immersive experiences through contributions that are both perceptible and consequential?

· Legal, ethical and economic frameworks: How to design frameworks that can protect intellectual property, address questions of collective authorship, and ensure equitable value distribution among human and artificial agents contributing to creative processes and outputs? 

These questions have been previously explored through a performance workshop with English National Opera in Manchester (U.K.), and will be anchored in real-world production environments at Malmö Opera, Finnish National Opera, and the Spatial Audio Lab at IT University of Copenhagen, alongside a growing international network of collaborators. Combining stakeholder co-design, ethnographic enquiry and arts-based action research, the series enables researchers and practitioners to conceptualize co-creative AI organization, design concepts and successive prototypes, and evaluate them in these cultural “living labs.”

Through reciprocal exchange, artistic practice will inform AI engineering, legal frameworks and sustainable business design, while technological affordances expand creative and participatory possibilities. The series aims to generate actionable, evidence-based knowledge for a more inclusive future of opera and heritage performing arts—a future in which innovation is assessed by its capacity to deepen civic cultural participation and sustain cultural and creative economies.

Malmö Opera Workshop Agenda

7th October (Wednesday)

14.00-14.15 Welcome & Introduction

14.15-15.15 Presentation

· AI, Automation, Tracking in Opera: Svante Axbacke, Head of the sound and streaming department at Malmö Opera, and The Shining production team

· Frontier AI Production Model: Paweł Jabłoński, Chief Technology Officer at OnstageAI

· Improvisation for Opera Innovation: Cliona Cassidy (Improvisation coach, soprano, and experimental vocalist) + Dr Alexandra Huang-Kokina (Research Fellow at Lund University, University of Manchester and co-founder at Operactive Arts)

15.15-16.30 Panel Discussion- Reaching new audience through digital innovation, and equipping opera performers with digitally empowered skills

• Jesper Larsson, Head of production, planning, marketing and sales at Malmö Opera
• Hannu Järvensivu, Virtual stage project manager at Finnish National Opera and Ballet
• Kalle Rasinkangas, XR & 3D Specialist at Finnish National Opera and Ballet
• Facilitated by Dr Alexandra Huang-Kokina

17.00-18.30 Networking & Dinner

19.00 Watch the new opera production of The Shining at Malmö Opera

8th October (Thursday)

9.30-10.30 Reflections on opportunities for innovation in live opera

10.30-12.00 Stakeholder co-creation on radical innovations for the future of opera - potential publications and funding applications

12.00-13.00 Lunch break

13.00-15.30 Improvisation within heritage art & organisational creativity

· Discussion: improvisation as opera dramaturgy

· Training: Improvisation for performers and researchers

15.30-19.00 Small-group exercise (practice-based demonstrations with immersive and AI systems)