Human-centred generative AI framework for cultural industries' digital transition.
About HAMLET project
HAMLET is a new European research and innovation project (Horizon Heritage, 2025–2027) in which ICK is a partner. The project aims to make generative AI accessible to everyone working in the cultural and creative sectors. Whether artists, designers, game developers, or dance and theatre companies, HAMLET seeks to use AI to enrich creative processes, foster collaboration, and accelerate digital innovation within the cultural field.
At the heart of the project is the HAMLET Collaborative Community Hub – a digital co-working space where creators, researchers, and developers from different backgrounds come together. Here, they can exchange ideas, test AI tools, and co-develop new applications. The hub includes technologies for generating 3D assets, adaptive storytelling, dance motion analysis and generation, music-to-movement translation, automated video editing, and audience engagement analysis.
A key objective of HAMLET is to lower the barriers to using AI. This is done by developing accessible user interfaces, encouraging cross-sector collaboration, and creating fair investment and revenue-sharing models around AI. The project also addresses ethical questions related to AI and explores sustainable ways of integrating the technology into the cultural sector.
The HAMLET consortium brings together twelve organizations from six countries (Austria, Cyprus, Germany, Greece, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands). It includes a diverse mix of tech experts, dance and theatre companies, arts education institutions, gaming studios, and research organizations.
ICK's contribution
Within HAMLET, ICK focuses on testing, evaluating, and co-developing AI tools from a choreographic perspective. This involves two specific components: the Dance Style Analysis and Generation Enabler and the Music-to-Movement Translation Enabler for Dance. ICK explores how these technologies can be applied in the dance creation process and how they can support dancers’ intuitive bodily awareness.
This work takes shape in Pilot 3: Archetype Alchemy, which investigates the relationship between AI and the pre-choreographic elements – a concept developed by ICK that refers to the fundamental building blocks of dance creation, such as intention, direction, tension, and timing. These elements are the starting point for choreographic thought and action, before any fixed structure or form emerges.
Hackathons, workshops, online lectures, and studio sessions come together on 10-12 February for Think Inside The Box. Creating Immersive Experiences with Digital Cultural Heritage. The event is organised by the German University of Fine Arts HBKsaar and the Germany-based Institute for Strategic Aesthetics K8, in collaboration with the European research and innovation projects IMPULSE, CYANOTYPES, and HAMLET, of which ICK is a partner.
Think Inside The Box offers a shared space to explore how developments in XR (Extended Reality) and AI (Artificial Intelligence) are reshaping our ways of seeing the world – and, more specifically, how we conceive of, experience, and preserve cultural and digital heritage. Everyone is welcome to take part; no specific skills are required to think and act together at the cutting edge.
On 11 February 14:00-15:30, together with project partners CYENS, AUTH, IJAD, and HBKSaar, ICK presents the online webinar AI’s the Thing: Immersive Futures in Dance and Performance Research. A HAMLET Living Lab. ICK brings into focus the ongoing research of HAMLET’s Pilot 3 “Archetype Alchemy”, which investigates the relationship between AI and the Pre-Choreographic Elements – a concept developed by ICK around the fundamental building blocks of dance creation, such as intention, direction, tension, and timing. ICK will also introduce previous projects focused on dance creation and dance knowledge transmission with new technologies. The webinar concludes with a moderated discussion, opening a shared reflection on the future of immersion, performance, and human–machine relations.
