Embodied worldbuilding / A growing collection
Movement, roleplay, making, and collective imagining.
Southern Devices: Ash Eliza Smith dances with a drone. The paired aerial stills show the drone’s shadow entering the choreography and the larger shape of Optimist Park.
Stills: Raber Umphenhour and Ash Eliza Smith.
Images shared by Ash Eliza Smith: the complete image set from Performing the What-If, alongside MuMu, The Middle, workshops, and teaching. Explore the practice that informs this toolkit, with each project’s context and credits.
25 images · Select a gallery image to view the full frame. For dates and development context, visit the workshop history.
04 images / In practice
Bodies, rhythms, orientations, and scales become ways to explore a world. These examples include Southern Devices and MuMu.
Southern Devices: Ash Eliza Smith dances with a drone. The paired aerial stills show the drone’s shadow entering the choreography and the larger shape of Optimist Park.
Stills: Raber Umphenhour and Ash Eliza Smith.
Performing the What-If · Figure 2
MuMu playtest documentation: a participant explores an XR world through headset viewing and hand gestures.
Project documentation; photographer not specified in source.
MuMu / Playing for Perspectives · No Coast SciComm presentation
MuMu playtest documentation: a participant sits near floor level while interacting through an XR headset.
Project documentation; photographer not specified in source.
MuMu / Playing for Perspectives · No Coast SciComm presentation
MuMu playtest documentation: a headset participant explores on hands and knees while others take part across the gym.
Project documentation; photographer not specified in source.
MuMu / Playing for Perspectives · No Coast SciComm presentation
05 images / In practice
A prototype, a robot, a setting, or a scenario gives participants something to meet and respond to. The encounter can change the world being rehearsed.
Two forms of encounter: engaging a speculative robotic prototype at the Speculative Robotics Lab Pop-Up, and observing a prairie dog colony at Cedar Point Biological Station during MuMu development.
Photos: Ash Eliza Smith (top); Jason Griffiths and Alex Gee (bottom).
Performing the What-If · Figure 1
Ash Eliza Smith guides a robotic arm at the Speculative Robotics Lab, where visitors developed speculative care scenarios through interaction and roleplay.
Photo: Deann Gayman / University Communication and Marketing.
Ash Eliza Smith and Reid Brockmeier work with robotic arms and a projected setting in the Speculative Robotics Lab.
Photo: Deann Gayman / University Communication and Marketing.
The Speculative Robotics Lab combines physical robots with projected settings for imagining situations of care.
Photo: Deann Gayman / University Communication and Marketing.
A participant interacts with the robot Quatro during Live Action Robotic Role Play at Kiewit Luminarium, Omaha.
Project documentation published by Robert Twomey; photographer not specified.
A Speculative Devices x Cohab Labs production: Ash Eliza Smith, Robert Twomey, Sam Bendix, and Reid Brockmeier.
05 images / In practice
Writing, drawing, cards, conversation, sound, and shared materials help a group give its ideas a form.
A worldbuilding workshop with community members in Alliance, Nebraska: people collect ideas in writing, conversation, and shared materials.
Project documentation; photographer not specified in source.
Alliance Worldbuilding Project · shared Midwest Sociological Society presentation
A facilitated community worldbuilding session, with participants gathered at tables and prompts and drawings around the room.
Project documentation; photographer not specified in source.
Alliance Worldbuilding Project · shared Midwest Sociological Society presentation
Radio Play at ISEA2022 in Barcelona: a shared writers’ room becomes a live, collaboratively authored radio performance.
Radio Play project documentation; photographer not specified.
Workshop: Ash Eliza Smith, Robert Twomey, and Jinku Kim.
A conversation beside a robotic arm during the Kiewit Luminarium workshop explores a visitor’s vision of future care.
Project documentation published by Robert Twomey; photographer not specified.
A Speculative Devices x Cohab Labs production: Ash Eliza Smith, Robert Twomey, Sam Bendix, and Reid Brockmeier.
Mood, object, spark, and narrative cards set out as invitations to make a story together.
Project documentation; photographer not specified in source.
Co-Constructing Multispecies Futures · project documentation ↗
04 images / In practice
The Middle brings community contributions into a shared digital environment. These views show the resulting world, alongside the workshop practices documented elsewhere in this collection.
A view into The Middle’s digital environment, assembling local places and imagined futures from community contributions.
Community contributors; Ash Eliza Smith, Sam Bendix, Daniel Lichtman, Alex Gee, Sam Lawton, Julia McQuillan, and Lisa Pytlik-Zillig.
A scene from The Middle’s interactive environment.
Community contributors; Ash Eliza Smith, Sam Bendix, Daniel Lichtman, Alex Gee, Sam Lawton, Julia McQuillan, and Lisa Pytlik-Zillig.
A scanned gathering place within The Middle’s shared digital world.
Community contributors; Ash Eliza Smith, Sam Bendix, Daniel Lichtman, Alex Gee, Sam Lawton, Julia McQuillan, and Lisa Pytlik-Zillig.
A storefront becomes part of The Middle’s navigable collage of community places.
Community contributors; Ash Eliza Smith, Sam Bendix, Daniel Lichtman, Alex Gee, Sam Lawton, Julia McQuillan, and Lisa Pytlik-Zillig.
06 images / In practice
Student work from Edgeland Futurism at UC San Diego shows how props, bodily action, and public encounters can make a speculative world available to others. Instructors: Ash Eliza Smith and Pepe Rojo.
Embodied scene with cardboard structures. Edgeland Futurism teaching gallery, UC San Diego. Instructors: Ash Eliza Smith and Pepe Rojo.
Student work from Edgeland Futurism, UC San Diego. Instructors: Ash Eliza Smith and Pepe Rojo. Photographer not specified.
Speculative food display and discussion. Edgeland Futurism teaching gallery, UC San Diego. Instructors: Ash Eliza Smith and Pepe Rojo.
Student work from Edgeland Futurism, UC San Diego. Instructors: Ash Eliza Smith and Pepe Rojo. Photographer not specified.
Discussion around a project table. Edgeland Futurism teaching gallery, UC San Diego. Instructors: Ash Eliza Smith and Pepe Rojo.
Student work from Edgeland Futurism, UC San Diego. Instructors: Ash Eliza Smith and Pepe Rojo. Photographer not specified.
Working with a fabric prop. Edgeland Futurism teaching gallery, UC San Diego. Instructors: Ash Eliza Smith and Pepe Rojo.
Student work from Edgeland Futurism, UC San Diego. Instructors: Ash Eliza Smith and Pepe Rojo. Photographer not specified.
Small-group discussion in the teaching gallery. Edgeland Futurism teaching gallery, UC San Diego. Instructors: Ash Eliza Smith and Pepe Rojo.
Student work from Edgeland Futurism, UC San Diego. Instructors: Ash Eliza Smith and Pepe Rojo. Photographer not specified.
Collective teaching exhibition. Edgeland Futurism teaching gallery, UC San Diego. Instructors: Ash Eliza Smith and Pepe Rojo.
Student work from Edgeland Futurism, UC San Diego. Instructors: Ash Eliza Smith and Pepe Rojo. Photographer not specified.
From Performing the What-If
Encountering, moving with, and becoming-with are overlapping modes of embodied practice. They can be explored through everyday materials as well as emerging technologies.
The manuscript’s comparison of encountering, moving with, and becoming-with, with examples that range from roleplay and everyday materials to robotics, drones, and XR.
From Performing the What-If, by Ash Eliza Smith and Julia McQuillan.
Performing the What-If · Table 1
| Mode | Case | What the body approaches | Low-fi | With emerging technologies |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Encountering | LARRP, Speculative Robotics Lab Pop-Up | Sharing a scenario of care with a machine | A person voices a robot from behind a screen; others roleplay with a found object | Working robots voiced in real time (Wizard-of-Oz), green-screen compositing |
| Moving with | Southern Devices drone dance | Being seen and tracked; where the body is free to go and where it is steered | Follow a partner with a phone camera, then swap; walk the sensors of a familiar street | Drone duet with an operator or in automated follow mode |
| Becoming-with | MuMu | Approaching a non-human umwelt and being reshaped by the relation | Draw two cards; move, or crawl, at that being’s scale and pace | In XR, crawling through a prairie dog burrow, stretching as an apple tree, or sowing seeds as a planting robot, with OZZI |
These modes are distinct from the three interwoven phases of Rehearsing Realities: enter the magic circle; prototype with entangled bodies; rehearse transformation. Read about the framework and its lineages.
Keep the practice growing
A photograph, a sketch, an object, a short performance, or a media link can help another group begin. Keep the prompts, a sentence about what happened, and the credit you want shown with the work.
Thinking about facilitating a workshop? Prepare a note about where, with whom, and what you hope to explore. You can be at the idea stage, ask for help, and decide separately whether a future workshop may appear in the public history.
These preparation previews keep your draft in your browser and send nothing. A submission form is not connected yet. Reply details and requests for help are private fields; public workshop listing requires a separate opt-in.
When sharing elsewhere, you can use #CoConstructingMultispeciesFutures and link to this toolkit. For a session you can run now, open the facilitation guide.
Images keep their source credits. Photo authorship is left unstated when the source does not name a photographer. New contributions will be displayed with the permission and credit agreed by their contributors.