(In)Visible Cities. 2025.

Built in Twine, with images and video co-created with Midjourney. AR augmentations via the Halo AR App. 

Created in Tkaronto, in the region of the Dish With One Spoon Wampum covenant between the Anishnaabek and the Haudenosaunee, affirming "reciprocal responsibilities with all of creation" and understanding the "land as a  dish to be shared and cared for to ensure ongoing sustenance and life" (Talking Treaties.ca).

 In 2025, I ask, what if we approached AI with the principles affirmed in the Dish With One Spoon Wampum? Would we use AI tools differently? How might we advance AI for Good if we did?

https://talkingtreaties.ca/treaties-for-torontonians/dish-with-one-spoon/

To view the AR layers, follow these steps.

Download the Halo AR app for  iOS & Android and have it open on your mobile. 

Scan the QR code when you see it in the Twine.  If the Halo AR app is running the (In)Visible Cities AR Media will load. 

Tap or click on "GET STARTED" and begin the Twine. The AR layers  will load on pages with the trigger cue - the "strawberry."

Created for the MIX 2025 Writing With Technologies. MIX Conference. July 2, 2025. Bath Spa University, Bath, UK. 

For All CatKind (@FurAllCatkind) began early Feb. 2024 as a response to the current bifurcation of (social) media coverage of world crises. The initial series of Midjourney images envision life in an idyllic seaside town, cats in their daily lives, with flying kites, picnicking, donkey carts, and market day. Posted to Instagram, two accounts now run divergent trajectories. On @Sioflynn, the joys of daily life continue. On @FurAllCatkind scenes of intensifying tragedy mediate unfolding events (Ukraine, Beersheba, Gaza, Sudan, Noumea, Tehran...). 

These divergent and shared storyworlds recontextualize Instagram’s uncritical juxtaposition of cats and catastrophes. Midjourney’s capacity for alterity and alienation of the nostalgic familiar can at times unsettle the normalization of dehumanization. Here, CatKind, as proxies for the LOLcat ambassadors of the internet, are remediations of what currently can’t yet be addressed directly online or IRL.

This new interactive project layers two storyworlds, the visible image and the layered AR, to reflect on the ongoing schism of living in safety and bearing witness from afar.

Full image credits for Public Domain images from the J.P. Getty Digital Collection are noted at the end of the work. All other images and videos were co-created with Midjourney.

Sound credits:

Helicopter Sound Effect by freesound_community from Pixabay

Fire - Sound Effect by FreeSoundsxx from Pixabay

Drone Sound Effect by freesound_community from Pixabay

Explosion distant Sound Effect by MountainDweller from Pixabay

Snow Sound Effect by freesound_community from Pixabay


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