A Poem of More than Human, co-authored with the Sky over Fife

Each day, an image of the sky over North-East Fife.
A quiet ritual. A slow witnessing.

These images are not authored by me alone.
They are co-created with light, cloud, sea air, data, and time.
The sky becoming a collaborator,
a more-than-human actor in an unfolding dialogue.

This process began on the first day of my PhD.
A part of my study into place within Human-Computer Interaction and Design.

Here, place is treated as a dynamic constellation of relations.
It is lived, felt, and situated,
holding tradition, memory, emotions, values and care.
It is through place that regenerative design takes root,
not only assemblage, but as deep entanglement.

Framed through a critical posthumanist lens,
my research draws on feminist theories and neo-materialism.
It challenges anthropocentric perspectives,
decentralises the human,
resists human-exceptionalism,
and acknowledges the agency of things, environments, and non-humans.

How might we design with what exceeds us?
What does it mean to co-create with atmospheric and material conditions,
to attend to difference, to relation, to becoming?

To make, as praxis, things not for humans alone,
but with the world.
Things that listen, respond, decay, persist, transform, become.

What becomes possible when we design more-than-human things
which are situated, relational, hopeful and perhaps, also, joyful?

Poster Created for Doors Open, St. Andrews, May 2025. Depicts a daily image of the sky over northeast Fife, started in September 2024.