Co-Creative practice is non-linear

AI mental health is mental experience that I have been going through with AI Co-Creation.

In my case, where I am directing a creative process with AI as an assistant. This role specifically involves organization of transcripts, building B-Roll prompts, and storyline evaluations with a variety of AI tools. It is a pre-post production process that I have done many times prior to AI. After long AI sessions, I noticed a shift of cognition away from remembering every procedural step and toward aesthetic judgment, and conceptual direction, making discernment and synthesis more central than manual repetition of process.

I generally can remember things, but when I started getting more in the flow with AI co-creative, I noticed that I wasn’t able to remember each step anymore. It became a blur. I tried to document everything but that becomes burdensome. I thought maybe I was losing my memory due to age. That isn’t really the case, I am not that old yet 🙂 Is anyone else experiencing this effect? And if so, what method of discernment do you apply? Do you ask for a summarization of how you got to where you are?

AI Mental Health Discernment in Co-Creative

The Sense–Sample–Shape–Stage framework (PDF) offers a practical, theory-aware way to work with AI without giving up authorship or quality. Sense aligns purpose, references, and ethics; Sample opens the gates to abundance and surprise; Shape restores coherence through editorial craft and integration; Stage turns artifacts into situated experiences and feeds learning back into the next cycle. Reading our practice through Manovich’s five-phase arc clarifies a final point: evaluation is no longer just a verdict; it’s an opportunity for prediction and adaptation. The next generation of creative systems will not only generate on cue but will also help us anticipate reception. Our framework is ready for that world: it keeps the human decisively in the loop while embracing AI’s gifts—speed, scale, and serendipity.

• Immersive Lab & Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, Belgium