More-than-Human Co-creation
The Uroboros has launched its fellowship program.
The inaugural fellowship round (November – December 2024) is oriented toward art and design researchers thinking and practising with more-than-human ecologies. Details of the fellowship are available here.
The very first Uroboros fellow Erik Peters was selected via an open call, with their project Before the Deluge. Erik will introduce Before the Deluge and parts of their ongoing research process at the Uroboros 2024 festival, as part of the Feral Nest: Multispecies Sense~making event on November 30th, 2024.
Erik Peters: Before the Deluge
Before the Deluge is an interactive and transoceanic odyssey set against the backdrop of the climate crisis. The research project explores the sources of knowledge we draw from in preparation for rising sea levels and environmental disasters. By connecting flood myths found across diverse cultures—symbolizing renewal and purification—to the omnipresent shapeshifting archetype of the Siren, Before the Deluge intertwines ancient narratives with dystopian tales of environmental devastation, reminding us that the world has ended many times before. Inspired by the paper ‘Deluge: From Genesis to Atlantis’ by Siversen and Redman, which traces narrative parallels between a vast amount of flood myths across the world, the project explores how more-than-human knowledge forms have always been part of our realities. Ranging from machine learning and climate models to multispecies co-existence and intergenerational wisdom, the project traces historical and cultural perspectives from transoceanic mythologies to explore the survival strategies and climate futures ahead of us.
Before the Deluge, Act 1: Monere is an interactive film built within a game engine. The visitor awakens stranded on a mythopoetic island, adrift in an endless ocean—a place beyond time and space, where all floods meet and come to rest. As they explore the island, players embark on a quest to retrieve three objects from different locations, each revealing a converged cosmology. These objects impart lessons on Earth’s cycles, transformation, monstrosity, and adaptation. As skywatchers, players search for patterns in an endless sky, striving to better understand the world. Meanwhile, a mysterious voice awakens and calls from a water shrine at the edge of the land.
