​ABOUT THE WORKSHOP

​What if your body was the instrument, and AI was your bandmate?

​In this hands-on workshop, artist and technologist Jak Woda guides you through a playful, experimental session using your gestures, voice, and movement as sound inputs - then feeding those sounds into AI tools to generate textures, patterns, and beats you could never quite plan for.

​We'll start with gesture-based synthesis: using a browser-based tool that reads your body movements through your webcam to trigger sounds - think digital theremin, no hardware required. From there, you'll describe those sounds in text prompts to generate new audio using EzAudio, use a language model to generate MIDI drum patterns and melodies, and layer everything together into a short collaborative piece.

​No music production or coding experience needed. Just a laptop with a browser, an experimental mindset, and a willingness to make some weird noises.

​By the end, you'll have made something - a mini-set, a sonic sketch, something entirely unplanned - collaboratively built with your fellow participants and a few neural networks along the way.

​What you'll explore:

• ​Gesture-to-audio: using body movement as a musical interface

• ​Audio-to-audio: transforming sounds with AI tools like EzAudio

• ​LLM-to-MIDI: generating drum patterns and melodies with language models

• ​Critical reflection: creative agency, AI's interpretive role, and what it means to "own" a generated sound

​What to bring: A laptop with a browser. Ableton or another DAW is handy but not required.

​Duration: ~2.5-3 hours

​Location: AIxDESIGN Foundation, NDSM Warehouse, Amsterdam

​If you have any accessibility needs, please tell us so we can do our best to care for them 🙂

​ABOUT HOST

​Jak Woda [Mateusz Mieciek] is a media technologist and artist from Warsaw, based in Copenhagen. He makes phygital tools, embodied musical interfaces, and participatory installations that invite everyone - regardless of technical background - into the creative process. His work spans pose recognition, AI noise augmentation, and human-machine musical collaboration, often merging new technologies with more traditional techniques.

​He's been producing, performing, and releasing music since 2019, and has facilitated workshops at festivals including Roskilde 2025. At the heart of his practice is a simple belief: we all have creativity and sensitivity. The tools should invite that out, not gatekeep it.

​Learn more on his Instagram @quasiaqua, Linkedin, or website https://waterlike.tools/.

​ABOUT AIxDESIGN

​AIxDESIGN is a non-profit community organization making AI work for the rest of us. We bring people together – like designers, artists, technologists, and researchers – to challenge dominant AI narratives, research alternatives, and make them real. Learn more at aixdesign.co.

​ABOUT OPEN CULTURE TECH 2.0

​This event is hosted by Thunderboom Records + AIxDESIGN as part of Open Culture Tech - an initiative of Thunderboom in collaboration with Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision, Superposition, AIxDESIGN, Wij Doen Dingen, Bureau Moeilijke Dingen, Bedrijf de Liefde, Chagall, & Wesley Hartogs, and funded by Cultuurloket DigitALL.

​Open Culture Tech makes immersive technology more accessible to artists by running residencies, publishing open-source tools, and hosting showcases to share insights with the music industry. OCT Workshops is an event series hosted by Thunderboom Records and AIxDESIGN during OCT 2.0 offering hands-on workshops featuring musicians using AI and immersive technologies in their creative workflows.