The Human Agency Compass Workshop
“How do we remain active participants in a world increasingly shaped by intelligent technologies?”
The Human Agency Compass is a participatory performance workshop that invites participants to navigate a large-scale floor drawing exploring the relationship between human agency and the twelve themes of the Human Agency Compass. Participants move through a constellation of interconnected themes, reflecting on how digital technologies shape perception, behaviour, attention, and decision-making.
Drawing on collected data research in cyberpsychology and digital wellbeing, alongside abstract network visualisations created through Gephi software, the workshop explores the social, environmental, and extractive entanglements of artificial intelligence and the attention economy. It considers how human agency can be consciously cultivated within increasingly automated environments, inviting participants to map the values, capacities, and forms of awareness they wish to preserve and strengthen in an age of AI.
Participants are invited to create their own Human Agency Compass through drawing, interpreting the spoken research in whatever visual language feels natural to them, echoing the way Gephi translates data into abstract graphical forms. Part performance, part collective reflection, and part drawing exercise, the workshop offers a space to reconsider what should be delegated to machines and what should remain distinctly human.
This workshop marked Ellen’s first prototype of the Human Agency Compass, laying the foundation for its ongoing adaptation and further development.
