Merging Minds

Researchers from the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities are investigating how new and emerging technologies for collective thinking, sensing, and decision-making are challenging widely accepted notions of what individual and collective agency entails. To collaborate on this research, we are fortunate to have the arts collective of Yambe Tam and Albert Barbu in residence, who have created a public art installation and immersive computer game experience in response to their residency.

The Rethinking Collective Minds research line aims to show how novel constellations of brains and computers require us to rethink our conceptions of collective entities, and the ethics which accompany them.

Questions we seek to explore include: what does it mean for a Collective Mind to have an identity?; what becomes of the individual in an increasingly connected world?; how can we understand the moral agency of a Collective Mind?

Throughout the project we have run games testing events and focus groups with students from The Cherwell and Wheatley Park schools. These events were co-designed with the NEUROSEC 'Young Persons Advisory Group', to ensure that younger people's perspectives were appropriately captured and included. As a result, the students have directly fed into the project design. The final gaming experience and accompanying sculptures were displayed at a Fusion Arts Oxford venue in May 2023. Watch out for updates here and on our twitter page for future tours of the artworks and game.

If you would like more information on the Merging Minds arts residency, please get in touch to request a copy of our 'End of Project Report': weh@bdi.ox.ac.uk