Thinking Atlas

Thinking Atlas is a participatory performance format in which a group thinks in parallel. Around twenty people sit at a shared table and are given privacy microphones, which let them speak without anyone else in the room hearing them. Everyone responds to the same prompt at the same time, and no one hears anyone else.

The software transcribes every response and plots each claim on a shared atlas, projected onto the table. The group then reads its own collective thinking, without knowing who said what. The atlas becomes the prompt for the next round, so the group is not only analysing its thinking but building on it.