How do we imagine futures that do not erase the places they emerge from? This keynote explores a place-based approach to imagining climate futures through immersive media, traditional knowledge, and co-creation.

Drawing from The Imaginary Atlas, Amazônia, an ongoing project developed through fieldwork and collaborations in the Amazon rainforest, it reflects on how storytelling, interactive installations, and emerging technologies can be shaped by local knowledge systems and cultural practices.

Rather than proposing universal futures, the work focuses on building situated narratives through workshops, collective worldbuilding, and embodied experiences. The talk discusses how combining different forms of expression (from TEK to emerging tech) can open up new ways of prototyping futures that are more plural, grounded, and connected to lived realities.

Prof. Ziemer will present how her team conceptualizes the Urban Digital Twin in Hamburg Germany as part of the MIT City Sciences project. The twin involves a strong citizen driven approach.  She will also discuss integrating local community knowledge in another Twinning entitled “Real Time Kalahari Research Lab“.

In this short talk, Jasmin Askew from Agog: The Immersive Media Institute will share their mission to create awe…and inspire action with immersive experiences. In conversation with the WORLDING team.

Ahupua’a Living Lab is an interactive spatial storytelling and restoration platform rooted in Puʻuhonua ʻo Waimānalo, Oʻahu.

Drawing on LiDAR, drone imaging, and moʻolelo (stories), it makes visible the ancestral intelligence of Kānaka Maoli land systems – reconnecting people to ʻāina and modeling regenerative climate futures.

Speakers:

Tiare Ribeaux, Storyteller
Brandon Makaʻawaʻawa, Placemaker
Daniel Kinzer, Creative Technologist

KUCHEMA XR is a community-led immersive project integrating Indigenous knowledge and agroecology practices to support climate adaptation, ecosystem restoration and intergenerational environmental stewardship in Chimanimani, Zimbabwe.

The project integrates XR tools into programmes that promote agroecology, water conservation, soil restoration and disaster risk reduction, by bridging ancestral practices and digital tools to foster community-led environmental stewardship and scalable approaches to climate adaptation.

Speakers:

Chipo Mapondera, Creative Technologist
Thania Matamande, Disaster Management Science Practitioner
Owen Chirikure, Storyteller

Clouds Are Massing is a living laboratory for citizen participation, using a location-based immersive experience and data storytelling to engage the public in the planning of a future data centre in Montreal, through speculative design. As a space for collective reflection, the Clouds are Massing leverages immersive data storytelling to empower citizens’ deliberative processes.

Speakers:

Alexandra Marin, Director
Manuel Bolduc, Creative Technologist
Sandrine Lambert, Storyteller

Paru is an interactive place-based documentary grounded in a decade of peatland field research that structures the transboundary haze crisis as a series of decisions and exchanges by exploring impossible economic choices facing smallholder farmers in West Kalimantan.

Through a series of collective decisions and exchanges, it reimagines game mechanics within a live sensorial environment: projection mapping onto organic surfaces, spatial audio, farmer testimony, and field recordings.

Speakers:

Alysha Nelson, Storyteller
Adi Gangga, Forester