This final collection of data streams tracks the cultural imaginaries that shape our collective response to planetary crises. By analyzing the prevalence of apocalyptic, utopian, and regenerative themes in literature, games, and film, the organism senses the narrative weather of our time—the stories we tell ourselves about collapse, survival, and the possibility of other worlds.
What it does: At each data refresh, the organism selects a random term from the curated list below, pulls its corresponding book count from the local JSON file, and maps that value to the particle scale.
How location is fetched: This is a non-geographic data stream.
Curated Search Terms:
Source of the data: The book counts are from the Open Library Search API, compiled by the script and stored in the local all-static-data.json file.
API or JSON: JSON
Description: Apocalyptic literature stages collective anxieties about systemic collapse, functioning as a cultural rehearsal for breakdown and adaptation. Including this data maps how societies narrativize risk and survival, making visible the imaginaries that shape public appetite for both mitigation and resignation.
What it does: Selects a random term from the curated list below, pulls its corresponding book count from the local JSON file, and maps that value to the particle scale.
How location is fetched: This is a non-geographic data stream.
Curated Search Terms:
Source of the data: The book counts are from the Open Library Search API, compiled and stored in the local all-static-data.json file.
API or JSON: JSON
Description: Utopian and protopian literature articulates alternative social and ecological arrangements. They are practical blueprints, ethical experiments, and speculative rehearsals for better worlds. This data stream balances dystopic saturation by surfacing design imaginaries that emphasize care, repair, collective governance, and interspecies future.
What it does: Selects a random tag from the curated list below, pulls its corresponding game count from the local JSON file, and maps that value to the particle scale.
How location is fetched: This is a non-geographic data stream.
Curated Search Terms:
Source of the data: The game counts are from a manually curated list of tags on the itch.io platform, an open marketplace for independent digital creators. This data is compiled by the script and stored in the local all-static-data.json file.
API or JSON: JSON
Description: Post-apocalyptic are cultural technologies that teach particular moralities and political habits. Frequently the genre stylizes scarcity and the systemic drivers of real-world crises that produce collapse into play loops that valorize lone survival, resource hoarding, and militarized problem-solving. These are narratives that can naturalize violence and individualist fantasies of rugged resilience while shaping collective imaginaries about who is entitled to survive and who is expendable.
What it does: Selects a random tag from the curated list below, pulls its corresponding game count from the local JSON file, and maps that value to the particle scale.
How location is fetched: This is a non-geographic data stream.
Curated Search Terms:
Source of the data: The game counts are from a manually curated list of tags on the itch.io platform. This data is compiled by the script and stored in the local all-static-data.json file.
API or JSON: JSON
Description: Utopian and regenerative games experiment with mechanics of cooperation, repair, and community-building, making hopeful futures legible through play. These systems reward care, stewardship, and long-term thinking, offering instructive models for civic and ecological practice. They are interactive laboratories where social design and ecological ethics can be tested in embodied form, generating insights about how play can cultivate dispositions conducive to regenerative multispecies futures.
What it does: Selects a random category from the curated list below, pulls its corresponding film count from the local JSON file, and maps that value to the particle scale.
How location is fetched: This is a non-geographic data stream.
Curated Search Terms:
Source of the data: The film counts are from the English Wikipedia API, by querying the number of pages within specific, curated categories. This data is compiled by the script and stored in the local all-static-data.json file.
API or JSON: JSON
Description: Post-apocalyptic films reveal how audiovisual media distribute emotional and political responses to crises, often mobilizing heroic, survivalist, or punitive frames. Many function as cli-fi narratives that stage climate-connected breakdowns and infrastructural failure. These films map how the public imagines environmental catastrophe, adaptation, and injustice, shaping risk perception and moral responsibility.
What it does: Pulls the film count for the "Utopian films" category from the local JSON file and maps that value to the particle scale.
How location is fetched: This is a non-geographic data stream.
Curated Search Terms:
Source of the data: The film count is from the English Wikipedia API, by querying the number of pages in the "Utopian_films" category. This data is compiled by the script and stored in the local all-static-data.json file. The category will include in the future also protopian tags but right now they are not present on wikipedia.
API or JSON: JSON
Description: Utopian and protopian cinema stages worlds in which social relations, institutions, and technologies have been intentionally redesigned for care, repair, and ecological reciprocity. These films matter because they convert design theory and political proposals into embodied, sensory scenarios, allowing audiences to experientially test and critique alternatives to extractive modernity.