Businesses, governments and citizens all have a role to play in supporting urban biodiversity. How might digital technology help? And how can we design more-than-human smart cities in practice and policy, and in ways that work for citizens?

About Mosaic

Mosaic is a four-year programme of collaborative, interdisciplinary, and cross-sectoral research and innovation that will deliver a step‑change in how we design, plan and build our cities for thriving multispecies cohabitation.

Funded with a £1.6 million investment through a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship awarded to Dr Sara Heitlinger, the research is investigating large‑scale transformation of smart cities from a human-centered perspective, to a more‑than‑human one. A more‑than‑human perspective of cities is one that acknowledges and designs for the interrelations between humans and non‑human others – including plants, animals, bacteria, as well as water, air and sensors – in urban space.

Transforming cities for multispecies cohabitation, with the help of digital technologies

Furtherfield is collaborating to develop innovative and interdisciplinary methods such as multispecies Live Action Roleplay to decenter the human. These methods help to reveal values, needs and challenges in place-based communities which will inform how we design and plan more-than-human smart cities.

You can watch this video to get a sense of how it works.

Visit the Mosaic website to learn more about this project.

The Hologram is a mythoreal viral four-person health monitoring and diagnostic system practiced by people from couches all over the world. Three non-expert participants create a three-dimensional or “holographic” map of a fourth participant’s physical, psychological and social health, and each becomes, the focus of three other people’s care in an expanding network.

How does Social Holography Work?

The premise is simple:

• Three people – the ‘Triangle’ – meet on a regular basis, to listen to and support the physical, mental and social health of a fourth person – the ‘Hologram’.
• The Hologram, in turn, teaches these listeners how to give and also receive care. When they are ready, the Hologram will support them to each set up their own triangle, and so the system expands.
• This social technology is based on the experimental care models developed in the Social Solidarity Clinics in Greece during the height of the financial and migration crisis. The result is the construction of a robust multidimensional health network, collectively-oriented social practices, and trust that can outlive capitalism.
• Its protocol ensures that all caretakers are cared for, and regards properly supporting someone else’s wellbeing as therapeutic in itself. The Hologram is a mythoreal viral distribution system for non-expert healthcare, practiced from couches around the world.

The Hologram was incubated at Furtherfield as part of CreaTures, Cassie Thornton during her artist residency in 2020, just as the Covid pandemic was taking hold. Artistic Direction, workshop design and facilitation by Cassie Thornton. Workshop design and facilitation by Lita Wallis.

Workshop 1 Is this the end or the beginning? (a course for collective health) Asking for help as a New World – Spring 2020

Workshop 2 We must begin again: Asking for help as a new world – Autumn 2020, supported by CreaTures

Hologram LARP Live Action Role-Play We were made for this // 2050 Fugitive Planning – 2021, supported by CreaTures.

The Hologram was incubated at Furtherfield in 2020 and is now practiced in many different languages by thousands of people around the world. Find out how to get involved here.

The CreaTures project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 870759. The content presented represents the views of the authors, and the European Commission has no liability in respect of the content.