urban metabolism – indiebio

12 July 202612 July 2026

Testing Claude code

The idea is to have stuff happen in the three.js scene – like rain falling when you click the cloud, and then that updating in the Sankey diagram below that (see the mm increasing). It’s not much yet and meaningless at this point, Sao Miguel is also “sculpted not surveyed” which is an interesting approach I may explore more intentionally, but it’s not bad for about 2 hours of playing over the weekend. Damn, AI is scary.

São Miguel, Azores — stylized elevation, not survey data

Click the cloud to make it rain · Drag to look around · Scroll to zoom

Sete Cidades max (mm) Lagoa do Fogo max (mm) Furnas max (mm)

Lagoa do Fogo 50% / 50% Furnas

No rainfall recorded yet — click the cloud on the São Miguel island scene to make it rain.

15 December 20258 January 2026

Building the ecology of the Metaverse

We are a collective, using digital technologies to address the challenge of interacting with complex knowledge ecosystems. We use people-centric technology development to empower informed, accountable action from the bottom up. Using digital hyper-connected, integrated technologies – what we understand as the Metaverse – potentially gives grassroots initiatives the ability to contribute to the growing integrated knowledge ecosystem – the Metaverse as an ecosystem – and thereby scale their efforts and networks globally. We are looking for consortium members to pursue research funding, or strategic partnerships with companies interested in the commercial potential of these approaches. Please find some use cases below with more information. We also welcome anyone to join the journey; find us on Discord – the Open Metaverse Interoperability Group (OMI) (website: omigroup.org/) or email me at bernellev@gmail.com.

30 March 202521 January 2026

Talk: The potential for emergent games to foster curiosity

This is a talk I gave for the Distributed Immersive Participation group, Stockholm University on 28 March 2025. I was happy to have a reason to update my talk, as the ones I gave on this topic in 2019 and 2022 were terribly out of date by now.

Slides: https://indiebio.co.za/curiosity_metaverse_adapted_24mar2025.html
pdf (27MB)
recording: on youtube

15 November 202419 May 2025

AquaSavvy (regenerated)

A group of us recently applied for EU funding for a DUT project, to, basically, bring water into the metaverse. Here’s the TL;DR of what the project is trying to do, should we be successful. Update: we made it through to the final round. We will know if we were successful in July 2025. I’ve updated the abstract to reflect the improvements we did in round 2.

30 October 202430 October 2024

Project 3.0

Some days the writing comes down on you like you need to take an urgent loo break. Today is one of those days.

I’m about to email my potential posts-doc supervisor explaining why I went silent for a long time. Two pivots, that’s why.

3 October 202310 October 2023

Academic components of peduncle

This project aims to create an interactive real-world based game or platform, visualising complex data onto a stylised, simplified digital twin earth, in order to facilitate insight into how to take action in an uncertain world, at the end of expertise, through an ethic of care and curiosity. It is aimed at grassroots, everyday people and their engagement with data and knowledge, in a visual, 3D, gamified way.

Perpetually in draft and evolving, of course.

7 September 202313 November 2023

Connected data, connected people

In my previous post about the end of expertise, I made the point that the root concerns of conspiracy theorists are valid. The suspicion and mistrust of powerful players are valid. That, if governments and corporations are not going to make the actual shift then we need to make that shift. Everyday people must make that shift.

Here I want to add some comments about the role of structured data in making it easier to access relevant evidence, or supporting insights, and hence, maintaining accountability.

14 August 202313 November 2023

Write-up, research outline try 2.

Here I’ve been trying to write a story with the headings, understandable to everyday people, assuming that the body will have the meaty academic content.

We are in crisis, and we need to act with some urgency.

There are two ways to act in crisis, and these are currently in tension.

The first way is to rely on traditional expertise, which is a “command and control strategy”, it is top-down. Experts say things and the rest of us do the things.

The second way is to do it ourselves, as a community, we just get in and do it.

10 August 202313 November 2023

Research outline

I am starting formal research about the community aspect of peduncle. Something about the end of expertise in a context of managing urban resources in a sociology of risk. I felt stuck so I wrote all the little things that I consider important on sticky notes and tried to group them. This is a first pass at the story that emerges.

Core values: curiosity, ethic of care, end of expertise, scenius (genius of scenes), interfaces, spaces between (outside and within), plurality?

30 March 202311 April 2023

Earth sciences and the metaverse

I don’t know why it took me as long as it did to figure out that it’s not really the geospatial layer per se I am interested in, but the multitudes of earth science layers on top of that. Doh. Geospatial is, to my mind, attempting to use technology to see what various aspects of the world looks like, but it’s a bit static. It looks at what is. I want to see what moves, and how they play together, what changes. My current thinking is maybe this is called earth sciences? This means I must revisit everything! Which is fine, I was so stuck that this will be inspiring. 🙂