Interfaces, Spaces Between
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 I was happy to have a reason to update my talk, as the ones I gave on this topic in 2019 and 2022 were terribly out of date by now.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
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.
Continue reading “AquaSavvy (regenerated)”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.
Continue reading “Project 3.0”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.
Continue reading “Academic components of peduncle”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.
Continue reading “Connected data, connected people”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. 🙂
Continue reading “Earth sciences and the metaverse”European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Penninga, F., Lutz, M., Minghini, M., et al. (2021) INSPIRE, a public sector contribution to the European green deal data space : a vision for the technological evolution of Europe’s spatial data infrastructures for 2030. Publications Office of the European Union. https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2760/8563
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Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) must evolve from complex and highly specialised frameworks to more sustainable, flexible and agile data ecosystems, lowering the entry level to non-specialists and welcoming an increased participation from less traditional stakeholders (e.g. open source software communities, standardisation bodies and early adopters) in addition to data providers and users.
in draft.
I used to be on the Zandvlei Protected Areas Advisory Committee (ZPAAC) for a few years. We were a group of people, both volunteers, residents in the area, and City employees tasked with managing the estuary, or ‘vlei’ in Afrikaans, hence the name. It was heavily impacted by poor design and construction choices in the 60s, in the form of the Marina da Gama estate, primarily, but also inappropriate urban density upstream, both formal and informal (backyard dwellers upstream with insufficient service delivery, and not enough toilets). So it needed constant management – rewilding was simply not an option.
Continue reading “Zandvlei, Demogarchy and Bitcoin”ThisIsColossal shared this beautiful game by Oskar StÃ¥lberg which immediately reminded me of my urban metabolism game (I mention it here).
Continue reading “Beautiful minimalist city builder games”Outlining the steps to work towards an Eden Project in the Western Cape.
Continue reading “EdenHope Project”