This session is facilitated by Sarah Newman
About this session
This art installation calls into question some of our most basic assumptions about human agency. Machines, for example, are causal, mechanistic, bound by their programming. Yet we see ourselves as different. What forces guide our actions? As our machines become more intelligent and we ourselves become more networked, what does it mean to have agency? Is it merely a useful myth, or is there something particular – even if inscrutable – about what it means to be human?
Goals of this session
We look, critically, at how our technologies work, and yet we make assumptions about how we work. What motivates our choices? Are we in control of our actions (if so: all of them, or only some of them)? As our interactions with and dependence on new technologies becomes both increasingly common and invisible, what, if any, agency are we giving up? In what ways are we influenced by our surroundings and our context? Is our agency really “ours”?
This piece reflects on such questions in a large scale work on paper, and a participatory element to gauge the perspectives and viewpoints of Mozfest attendees.