Introduction: the cryptogamic city

This glossary helps readers and workshop participants understand the cryptogamic oracle as a way of reading the city. Here, “cryptogamic” does not only name mosses, lichens, algae, fungi, liverworts and ferns. It also describes a mode of attention: a way of noticing hidden growth, buried processes, damp surfaces, neglected seams and the conditions that allow life to gather. See the project page here>

Techno-ecological

Linked ideas: technology, ecology, infrastructure, condition, relation

Techno-ecological describes the inseparable relation between technical systems and ecological conditions. In the cryptogamic city, drains, bricks, cables, sensors, roads, heat, water, spores, pollution and bodies form one field of relation.

Technology is not outside ecology. It shapes the conditions in which organisms live, and is itself altered by weather, growth, use, decay and repair. A leaking gutter, a warm vent, a cracked paving slab or a cable entering a wall can all become techno-ecological sites: places where engineered systems and living processes meet.

Cryptogams

Linked ideas: spores, dampness, surface, substrate, attention

Cryptogams include mosses, lichens, algae, fungi, liverworts and ferns. They are small, often overlooked life forms that gather on and between the surfaces of the city. They grow in cracks, mortar lines, roofs, steps, pipes, vents, drains and neglected corners. Ancient, persistent and hidden in plain sight, they reproduce by spores rather than flowers or seeds.

They arrive through air, water, dust, contact and disturbance. They reveal where the built environment is porous, damp, decaying, shaded or slow enough for life to take hold.

Cryptogams turn technological surfaces into habitats. They are teachers of attention. They ask us to look down, slow down and notice the living skin of the city. They show that infrastructure is never sealed, and that even the hardest human-made surface can become a place of attachment, growth and return.

Technology

Linked ideas: artefact, extraction, material, use, residue

For this project, technology means any human-made object, material or system that extends human capacity. It includes electronic and mechanical devices, but also bricks, tarmac, drains, glass, gutters, pipes, walls, tiles, signs, benches and paving slabs.

In a cryptogamic sense, the city is an assemblage of technologies. Some are obvious: cameras, lights, cables and phones. Others are so ordinary they disappear into the background: mortar, asphalt, concrete, steel, paint, plastic, rubber and glass. Their production is hidden, but they still carry histories of extraction, labour, heat, transport, design and use.

Technology is not separate from nature. It is material, weathered and entangled. It feeds on electricity, fuel, data, labour and mineral extraction. It produces heat, waste, residue, signal, carbon, sound and light. Cryptogamic attention follows these flows and notices what gathers at their edges.

Cryptogamic technology

Linked ideas: artefact, substrate, hidden process, afterlife, weathering

Through the cryptogamic lens, technological objects can be read as part of a hidden techno-ecology. They are made for human use, but they exceed that use. A brick shelters, supports and divides, but it can also hold damp, gather dust, crack, stain and become a substrate for moss or lichen.

To call an object cryptogamic is not simply to say that moss grows on it, although this may happen. It is to recognise that the object has concealed processes and afterlives. It emerges from extraction, manufacture, transport and labour. It spreads across the city as infrastructure. It weathers, leaks, gathers residue and becomes available to other forms of life.

Cryptogamic technology describes the objects of the city as both artefacts and substrates. They are made for human purposes, but they crack, leak, stain, warm, shelter, corrode and decay. They become places where spores settle, insects hide, water gathers and more-than-human life attaches itself to the technological skin of the city.

Humans

Linked ideas: body, inhabitant, organism, system, dependency

Humans create and inhabit crust-like structures on the Earth’s surface. At a distance, these structures appear as cities. Close up, they are made from stone, metal, glass, plastic, concrete, fibre, asphalt and signal.

Individual humans are not always in control of the systems they inhabit. They follow routes, consume what is supplied, dispose of what is unwanted and move through structures they rarely see in full. They are carried by roads, fed by networks, cooled, heated, watched and directed.

Through the cryptogamic lens, the human is not the centre of the city. The human is one participant within a larger techno-ecological system.

More-than-human

Linked ideas: agency, relation, non-human, material, responsiveness

More-than-human refers to the wider field of organisms, materials, infrastructures, technologies and conditions that shape urban life. It includes mosses, lichens, fungi, insects, animals, weather, water, stone, metal, data systems and forms of computation.

This does not mean that all things are alive in the same way, or that all systems have the same kind of agency. It means that human action is never isolated. It is shaped by other bodies, materials, processes and forms of intelligence or responsiveness.

In cryptogamic terms, more-than-human attention asks how a city is produced by many actors at once: human, biological, mineral, atmospheric and technical.

Networks

Materials / conditions: cables, fibre optics, roads, pipes, vehicles, wireless signals

Linked ideas: connection, enclosure, speed, signal, dependency

Humans first built shelters to protect themselves from weather. Over time, these shelters became connected by paths, roads, pipes, wires, vehicles and signals. Materials, water, energy, people and waste began to move between structures.

As communication systems became faster and more compact, they also became harder to see and understand. Electrical signals, fibre optics, wireless networks and data platforms now organise daily life at a speed and scale beyond ordinary perception.

A network is both support and enclosure. It connects, feeds, directs and watches. Cryptogamic attention asks what becomes hidden inside these systems, and what grows at their edges.

Shelter / Shell

Materials / conditions: brick, tile, steel, glass, render, paint, insulation

Linked ideas: membrane, weather, protection, failure, skin

Humans construct shelters to separate themselves from weather. Walls, roofs, tiles and windows form a hard shell against rain, wind, cold and heat. They also connect bodies to wider systems: electricity, water, heat, data, sewage, ventilation and security.

But the shelter is never sealed. Roofs leak. Seals fail. Dust gathers. Mortar softens. Paint cracks. In these small failures, cryptogamic life appears. Moss grows in the gap. Algae stains the edge. Lichen maps the weathered surface.

The shelter is a membrane, not a barrier. The wall is the skin of the city: hard, exposed, repaired, stained and always receiving the weather.

Gutter / Pipe / Sewer

Materials / conditions: zinc, plastic, cast iron, water, silt, leaves

Linked ideas: rain, diversion, drip, failure, redistribution

The gutter marks the boundary between human dryness and falling weather. Its function is to remove rain quickly from roofs and buildings, directing it into pipes, drains and underground channels.

Rain, once life-giving, becomes a management problem: something to divert, accelerate and export. But where the gutter fails, life gathers. A leak becomes a slow irrigation system. Moss forms beneath the drip. Algae darkens the wall. Soil begins in the crack.

The broken gutter is a small act of redistribution. It shows how a designed system can accidentally produce the conditions for another ecology.

Leak / Incidental Oasis

Materials / conditions: water, dust, guttering, air-conditioning vents, damp wall

Linked ideas: drip, accident, oasis, rhizoid, habitat

Beneath a leaking gutter or air-conditioning vent, the wall becomes an incidental oasis. A single drip darkens the surface. Dust gathers. Particles settle. A green wedge forms.

A leak is not simply a failure. It is a local ecology. Water escapes the designed system and pauses. Spores settle. Rhizoids grip. Moss thickens. The city produces, by accident, the conditions for another kind of life.

The leak is a cryptogamic event: a point where infrastructure becomes habitat.

Hatch / Portal / Access Point

Materials / conditions: iron, steel, plastic, concrete, rubber seals

Linked ideas: portal, seam, access, underworld, fringe

Hatches, drains, covers and service panels appear as small portals in the surface of the city. Some are square, some round. Some are patterned, labelled, coded or locked.

They suggest hidden systems below: cables, pipes, ducts, valves, fibre optics, electrical lines, sewage, gas, water and data. The gap around the hatch is often more alive than the hatch itself. Moss grows in the seam. Soil collects in the edge. The portal has a fringe.

The hatch is an orifice in the urban body. It gives access to hidden systems while creating a damp edge where other life can gather.

Black Box

Materials / conditions: galvanised steel, plastic, rubber, grey casing, labels

Linked ideas: concealment, interface, node, edge, enclosure

The black box conceals the working face of infrastructure. It contains nodes, switches, converters, relays, routers, junctions, meters and unknown devices. It is often silent, sealed, grey and anonymous.

Inside are cables, signals, connections and interfaces. Outside are dust, spiders, moss, rust, labels, scratches and weather. The black box hides the operation of the system while producing habitats at its edges.

It is a closed container with a living border.

Conduit / Vein

Materials / conditions: cable, rubber, copper, steel, fibre optic, plastic ducting

Linked ideas: flow, speed, signal, vein, entry point

Conduits are the veins of the urban body. They carry electricity, signal, light, data and instruction. Some are visible as pipes, ducts and bundled cables. Others disappear beneath pavements, walls and ceilings.

A fibre optic cable connects one building to another, one city to another, one body to another. Signals pass through glass at near-light speed, while moss grows slowly at the point where the cable enters the wall.

The conduit joins speed and slowness in one body.

Camera / Eye / Lens

Materials / conditions: CCD or CMOS sensor, glass, plastic, metal, cable, data storage

Linked ideas: watching, archive, sensor, attention, web

A camera is an eye that does not blink. Its sensor feeds on light behind a glass lens. The image becomes data. The data becomes storage, evidence, control, pattern or archive.

Perhaps a human watches through it. More likely, the image is processed, compressed, transmitted and held somewhere else. The camera appears to protect the human realm, yet it also belongs to a larger system of watching, sorting and governing.

Around the camera, spiders may build webs. The watcher is watched by other forms of attention.

Light / Lure

Materials / conditions: LED, sodium lamp, glass, aluminium, electricity, insects

Linked ideas: night, lure, glow, feeding, orientation

The streetlight draws electrons from the grid and spills them onto the pavement. It marks the space below as human space: safe, visible, usable and directed.

But light is also a lure. Insects gather. Spiders wait. Bats feed at the edge of the glow. The lamp becomes an accidental feeding system.

The light does not only illuminate. It rearranges night life.

Drain / Digestive Tract

Materials / conditions: iron grid, concrete, water, oil, leaves, grit, runoff

Linked ideas: swallowing, runoff, mouth, waste, accumulation

The drain is part of the city’s digestive system. Rainwater, waste, dirt, oil, leaves, grit, residue and toxic runoff pass into underground channels. The city swallows what falls on its surface and moves it away.

Below the visible street is another network of pipes, tunnels, tanks and flows. This hidden system keeps the surface dry, usable and clean enough for human movement.

At the drain’s edge, however, materials accumulate. Leaves rot. Soil forms. Moss gathers around the grid. The digestive tract leaks life at its mouth.

Sewage / Output

Materials / conditions: ceramic, plastic pipe, concrete tunnel, water, organic waste

Linked ideas: metabolism, displacement, overflow, treatment, return

The human body feeds the city’s underground systems. Waste travels through ceramic bowls, plastic pipes, concrete tunnels and treatment works, eventually returning to river systems in altered form.

Sewage is the city’s metabolism made visible only at points of failure: stench, blockage, overflow, flood. It reminds us that the human is not separate from infrastructure. Human life is routed through hidden pipes, pumps and treatment processes.

Output is never simply gone. It is displaced, processed, diluted, transformed and returned.

Shed Devices / Technological Litter

Materials / conditions: headphones, vapes, charger cables, broken phones, batteries

Linked ideas: litter, fossil, desire, extraction, abandonment

Found technology lies in gutters, under benches, beside bins and in puddles. Headphones, vapes, charger cables, broken phones and battery packs contain copper, plastic, lithium, rare earth metals, glass, rubber and labour.

These objects are small fragments of global extraction dropped into the local street. A charger cable becomes a dead root. A vape becomes a bright synthetic seed. A headphone wire becomes a broken tendril.

Found tech is technological litter, but also a fossil of desire, convenience and abandonment.

Mobile Technology / Companion Technology

Materials / conditions: glass, plastic, lithium battery, rare earth metals, sensors, microphones

Linked ideas: companion, portal, attention, extraction, intimacy

Mobile devices are carried close to the body. They are warm, touched, charged, watched and listened to. They are made of glass, plastic, metals, batteries, cameras, microphones, sensors and signals.

Like an invisible umbilical, they connect the user to networks and extend the data body. They gather attention, location, image, sound and behaviour. The mobile device is both tool and companion, portal and parasite.

It is intimate technology: held in the hand, pressed to the face, carried through the city and linked to systems far beyond the body.

Signals / Electromagnetic Weather

Materials / conditions: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, radio, GPS, phone signals, sensors

Linked ideas: signal, weather, location, transmission, invisibility

The city is filled with invisible data. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, radio, GPS, phone signals, payment systems, surveillance feeds and sensor networks move through the air.

This electromagnetic weather is not seen, but it shapes behaviour. Doors open. Payments pass. Screens refresh. Cameras upload. Maps update. Bodies are located.

The cryptogamic city asks what grows beneath this invisible weather, and what forms of life persist under the signal.

Air Conditioning / Breath

Materials / conditions: vents, fans, condensate pipes, heat exchangers, warm air, moisture

Linked ideas: breath, heat, regulation, condensation, exhaust

Buildings and the technologies they house require thermal regulation. Servers run. Lights burn. Cars idle. Pipes radiate. Heat exchangers hum. Air-conditioning units expel warmth into alleys, rooftops and service yards.

The city uses vast energy reserves to maintain internal climates for humans, machines and data. Its breath is not only air, but heat, vibration, condensation and expelled moisture.

Around vents and outlets, surfaces change. Damp patches form. Warmth gathers. Dust sticks. Cryptogamic life may appear where climate control meets weather.

Input / Output

Materials / conditions: metals, tarmac, cables, pipes, vents, loading bays

Linked ideas: flow, intake, release, metabolism, edge

Electricity enters through pylons, substations and cables. Food enters by road. Water enters through pipes. Data enters through networks. People enter through stations, doors and vehicles.

Waste leaves as sewage, heat, carbon dioxide, vapour, noise, rubbish, data exhaust and polluted water. The city is not a static container. It is a system of intake and release.

Cryptogamic attention follows these flows at the point where they touch surfaces: the pipe joint, the loading bay, the vent, the gutter, the cracked kerb, the damp wall.

Road / Feeding Mechanism

Materials / conditions: tarmac, aggregate, oil, rubber, paint, kerb, road dust

Linked ideas: speed, logistics, feeding, edge, breakdown

Roads feed the city. They carry food, materials, workers, refuse, fuel, parcels and waste. They appear as routes for individual movement, but they also act as conveyor belts for the metabolism of the urban body.

The road is not just a surface. It is a feeding mechanism. It connects the city to distant farms, factories, warehouses, ports, quarries and data-driven logistics.

At its edges, in cracks and kerbs, cryptogams gather where speed breaks down.

Vehicle / Exobody

Materials / conditions: metal, rubber, petroleum, lithium, glass, plastic, software

Linked ideas: exobody, speed, shell, exhaust, extension

Vehicles are hard-bodied units on wheels. Hidden in their soft centres, smaller human operators move at speed while using less of their own bodily energy. Cities are organised around these mobile exobodies.

Vehicles feed from the grid, batteries or liquid fossil fuels. They shed rubber, heat, noise, exhaust, brake dust and oil. They extend the human body while surrounding it with metal, glass, plastic, software and signal.

The vehicle is a travelling shell: a moving technology that changes the scale, speed and reach of the body.

Surfaces / Skins / Membranes

Materials / conditions: pavement slab, brick, mortar, glass, metal, gum, oil, dust

Linked ideas: skin, membrane, texture, attachment, trace

Pavement slabs, bricks, mortar, glass and metal form the skins of the city. These surfaces are repeated, simulated, repaired and standardised. They appear fixed, but they are always changing.

Concrete cracks. Roots lift slabs. Rain stains walls. Gum, oil, dust and footsteps mark the ground. Moss and ferns gather in the joints. Algae and lichens thrive where texture, moisture and slowness allow them to attach.

A surface is not a blank background. It is a membrane where weather, bodies, materials and life meet.

Green Space / Counter-system

Materials / conditions: soil, weeds, moss, managed planting, wasteland, cracks, roofs

Linked ideas: cultivation, permission, wasteland, counter-system, habitat

The garden is one of the few urban spaces where people are permitted to cultivate, repair, grow and make. These spaces are often managed, selected and designed around particular plants, aesthetics and maintenance needs.

But green space also appears outside authorised boundaries: in wasteland, gutters, walls, roofs, cracks, service yards and incidental gardens. Here the city loosens its control. Soil is touched directly. Growth is not fully hidden behind walls, pipes or screens.

Green spaces operate as small counter-systems within the city. They show that cultivation, neglect, accident and resistance can all produce habitat.