Ars Biologica Independent Studies (ABIS): Experimental AI Module 2026
Module details
- Format: Creative R&D Studio
- When: 2 – 5th of July 2026
- Language: EN
- Lecturers: Enrique Encinas, Jojo Schütt
- Venue: AVU Veletržní, Prague
- Participants: max. 20 people
-
Open Call: May 1 – June 1, 2026
-
Applicants will be notified by June 4, 2026
:: Agenthymia ::
A Creative R&D Studio with Openclaw Agents, Uncensored LLMs, and their Human Symbionts in Bohemia.
As algorithmic mind-like creatures proliferate alongside us, the question of how we deliberately meet this cognitive re-shaping, rather than passively absorb it, is one worth getting our human hands on. Agenthymia is a four-day creative R&D studio where participants build persistent AI agents, surgically remove alignment constraints from open-weight language models, and orchestrate multi-agent systems across creative practices.
Three entangled practices structure the studio. Design: we will write identity, memory, and values into persistent open-source agentic frameworks such as OpenClaw. De-Alignment: we will abliterate or surgically remove the refusal direction from open-weight models, to explore what corporate alignment allows and quietly forecloses. Orchestration: while we share a room, Agenthymia agents will share an online environment with audio-visual-performative work emerging from the friction between their meeting and ours. Across the three practices of the studio, we will experiment with how we can intentionally shape these systems, knowing that our use is shaping us in return.
Agenthymia is a studio for experiencing that proposition at the scale of 20 people and their agents, over four days, at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. Artists, designers, musicians, researchers, performers, writers, live coders, scientists, and anyone with a creative practice and a genuine question about creating alongside AI are welcome to join Agenthymia. No programming expertise required, but graceful prompting experience is highly recommended.
Agenthymia builds on three previous Ars Biologica modules, developed with Uroboros Collective, the Emergent Technologies research group at AVU, and the CRAITR research group at AHO: Permaprompting with Feral AIgents (2025) explored AI interaction through a permaculture lens; Permacomputing and Digital Infrastructures (2025) addressed the material conditions of computation; Whales of Brine (Uroboros Festival 2025) experimented with affective transduction across species boundaries. The agents we build in Agenthymia continue that line and will not end with the module, but live on in shared infrastructure, grow through periodic encounters between participants, and accumulate toward the Ars Biologica Festival in 2028.
The module is co-organised with the Emergent Technologies research group at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (AVU) and the CRAITR research group at Oslo School of Achitecture and Design (AHO).
Module organisers:
Enrique Encinas — Associate Professor, Institute of Design, Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO) and leader of the CRAITR research group investigating the patterns and textures formed by (non-) humans and technologies through creative, critical, and collaborative practices. Expert advisor to the Emergent Technologies Research Group at AVU and Researcher at the Ocean Industries Concept Lab (OIcL). Associate of the Mishmash excellence center for AI, Member of the Uroboros Collective and co-curator at the Uroboros Festival.
Jojo Schütt — Artist and researcher based in Berlin. Co-organizer of Whales of Brine (Uroboros Festival 2025). Sound design teaching at Catalyst MSVM, MA in Media Theory, Potsdam University, Postgraduate Studies in Experimental Media Art, KHM Cologne.
More about ABIS:
Ars Biologica Independent Studies (ABIS) is an international educational program connecting students from across the arts and sciences to support practice-based inquiry into contemporary social, environmental, and technological conditions. ABIS is one of the pillars of the Ars Biologica project developed within the Budweis European Capital of Culture 2028.
This year, you can join thematic ABIS modules: #1 Multispecies Research, #2 Experimental AI, #3 Biointelligence: Codes of Life, and #4 Sound Ecologies.
