Intro
This seminar encouraged a systems-thinking approach, helping us understand how different parts of a project connected and interacted. Instead of focusing only on one tool or component, we learned to see the connections and the flow of information.
Technical diagram & prototype
Together with Mohit and Ziming, we created a mini prototype of an interactive music game in the style of Air Hero. The project is based on a hand-tracking system that controls the game using a camera and the P5.js library. The camera captures the user's hand movements, which are analyzed in real time by the tracking module. P5.js uses this input to display visual strings and falling blocks that the player must “hit” with hand gestures. The visual elements could be projected onto a surface using a projector. In addition to visuals, the system uses the P5.js sound library to generate sound effects, which are played through speakers. The aim was to creates an engaging rythm/music game experience controlled by movement.
Systemic narration
As part of the MDEFest Fabrication Challenge and this seminar, we worked on building a systemic narrative—a way to understand and communicate how our interventions connect with broader ecological, social, and urban systems. My proposal to MDEFest was an Interspecies City Workshop—a walk with relational mapping from a non-human perspective. The central artifact is a petri dish containing living Physarum polycephalum, growing on a 3D printed urban model of Barcelona.
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The experience begins with a short introduction, where participants are invited to reflect on their own position in relation to nature—as professionals and privately. After this moment of reflection, they are guided into a speculative walk through the city, led not by humans, but by the path traced by a living slime mold.
At the starting point, participants meet Physarum polycephalum growing on a 3D-printed map of Barcelona in a petri dish. This organism has organically mapped connections between urban green spaces, forming most efficient networks for co-creating ecological corridors. Participants follow this path through the actual urban environment. Their task is to map the space relationally. Each person represents a different ecological sphere—biosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere, or atmosphere (still to be decided)—and observes, senses, and collects impressions from their surroundings. They tune into often-overlooked signals: signs of lifes, flows, insect traces, soil textures, smells, movement, and blockages. Using simple tools like colored pens, charcoal, leaves, and paper, participants create “relational maps”: visual, intuitive representations of the flows of life and interconnections they perceive. These maps are not technical but subjective, offering a glimpse into non-human perspectives of the city.
At the end of the walk, the group gathers to share observations, discuss surprises and challenges, and reflect on gaps or “broken links” in the urban ecosystem. This collective process aims to create a multi-layered understanding of the city— shaped by empathy, embodied knowledge, sensing and interspecies connections.