Signs of life in urban habitats.

Media creatures. Data entities. Ludic lifeforms.

Urban organisms and crossmedia species.

A crossmedia ecology in a city consists of ecologies linked by portals through which creatures traverse its space. Through its networks of mixed realities, these diverse creatures – agents, avatars and alife – travel bringing the city to life. They activate the ecology through play.

Find these creatures around the city. They will be resting in nooks and crannies, in doorways and on windowsills, all around the city. Look for microhabitats and signs of life. The Crossmedia Ecologist is tagging as many of these sites as possible in a study of urban organisms and media creatures in the City of Melbourne. Up to 64 IDEOTAGs are now out there… gotta catch ’em all!

The city is home to a diverse range of lifeforms. Some of them are invisible, transient or hiding in the shadows. Others speak their own language, communicating in their own codes. Many are cultivated by humans whilst others emerge spontaneously given the right resources and conditions – often living off the waste of other systems. As part of her study, the Crossmedia Ecologist seeks to tag these organisms, creatures and entities hoping to someday create a comprehensive index of urban life.

On traces, flows and data in urban space there are two aspects to consider in urban codemaking:

1. Post-Humans (us) are reliant on machines for communication.
2. It is second nature for Ludeans (us?) to make abstractions of reality in terms of models, systems, processes, and flows.

We believe that the program put in place by the Locative Urbanist is structured around a relationship between these two aspects of contemporary urban space.

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The Locative Urbanist is looking through the eyes of the city. Wiring his program to the matrix of electronic eyes that watch over laneways and street corners. All this image data may enhance the program that already ‘looks certain to collapse’ or it may lift the game to a new level beyond his guilds current score of 42, equal to the Ecologists…

Look up. Look for electronic eyes. The arrows point to them in places they cannot see.

He can see what they see. His program has their data. Visual infos to augment the vectors. Too much information maybe – depending on how it is modelled. We shall see.

Within the Micronation of Ludea language and culture are generated via play. The Ludeans come from a generation that has grown up with games, abstract machines, and digital processes. It has become second nature for them to make abstractions of reality in terms of models, systems, processes, and flows.

The gentle cultivation of crossmedia ecologies is one of the primary strategies of world generation used by the Neo-Materialists. Rather than a way of building, it is a way of connecting and making new relationships between what is already there. The flow of reality is subtly shaped and directed using words and other signs…