Cryptogamic Oracle is a practice-based research project exploring how walking and photography can support more-than-human attention in urban space. Developed through moss walks and ecological workshops, the project invites participants to notice cryptogamic life, mosses, lichens, algae and ferns, in relation to the technological and infrastructural systems that shape the city, as indicators of dampness, shade, leakage, repair, neglect, maintenance and material design. The app functions as an urban probe, asking participants to photograph organisms, surfaces and infrastructures before recomposing these images through an oracle-like interface (the App). These readings do not provide answers, but generate prompts for reflection, relation and uncertainty. The research argues that speculative visual methods can help develop ecological attention that is situated, relational and attentive to more-than-human urban conditions.
The Cryptogamic lens
Through a cryptogamic lens, the city appears as a living and technological body: breathing, leaking, heating, sweating, digesting, signalling and shedding. Its organs are gutters, drains, roads, cables, vents, hatches, cameras, walls and pipes. These systems appear to serve human life, but humans are also organisms moving through a larger urban metabolism of shelter, drainage, heat, light, data, sewage, roads, signals and supply chains. Cryptogams reveal where this body is never fully sealed. They gather in cracks, leaks, seams, damp walls, service voids and neglected surfaces. Moss, algae, lichen and fungal life do not sit outside technology. They emerge within it, showing where infrastructure becomes porous, weathered and available to other forms of life.
To read more about the notion of the techno-cryptogamic read the full glossay here>
The readings…oracles and AI
The Cryptogamic Oracle draws from a data base of text which can be thought of like a deck of cards with multiple meanings. I was intrigued by tarot not as a tool for prediction, but how it is used as a sense making tool: a structure for reflection, interpretation. At the same time, I saw parallels with AI. Like an oracle, AI is consulted, returns a response, and asks us to interpret it. Around me, peers are also developing runic systems, oracle-like interfaces and other forms of guided reflection. My own pond computer project is my personal response to the acellerated proliferation of AI. A slow biotechnological non-human interligence that explores simple feedback processes, learning and responding (drawing on ideas from Stafford Beer and his pond computer experiments(1). But this raised a question: what would a pond computer actually do? How would a pond speak back? Ponds, pools and reflective surfaces have long been associated with contemplation, divination and looking beyond the visible.
And I began to wonder whether the pond computer could become a reflective interface rather than simply a computational experiment. Although the pond computer project is currently on hold, the reading database I developed for it began to evolve into a tarot-like structure. I started testing a reading generator and considered creating a graphic for each reading, or developing a generative process tied to pond life that could generate its own glyphs or symbols. The Cryptogamic Oracle grew from this point. It draws on the cultural connection between divination, technical systems and the production of guidance. It also responds to our increasing reliance on AI for everyday tasks: writing emails, searching for information, navigating cities, making decisions, or simply asking for directions.
The Crptogamic Oracle does not predict the future or reveal hidden truths. It works as a reflective apparatus. It creates a pause, offers a prompt, and invites interpretation.
AI however, is still present in the system. It is part of the making of the app, part of the code, the hidden infrastructure behind the interface; as a non-human actant. The oracle is therefore “oracular” in a limited, practical sense. It is consulted, responds, and its response must be interpreted. Like the urban infrastructures the project attends to, AI remains partly hidden in operation. It is “cryptogamic” not because it is alive or mystical, but because it works beneath the visible surface, through technical dependencies that are not fully available to the user.
The card deck has gone through many iterations. It began as a non-human, ecologically focused deck that inverted the human-centred narratives often found in tarot. Later versions introduced eco-technological themes, bfore narrowing more specifically towards cryptogams and the wider idea of the cryptogamic: hidden growth, surface attention, technical opacity and forms of life that operate at the edge of visibility.
Here are the cards (version 7, updated 11 June 2026)
Using the App the cards are bound to composite images generated when the user submits photgraphs to the oracle. Here are examples of the outputs so far..
Output composites Crptogamic Oracle (desktop app created using js. created using Visual Code studio + AI assistance)
Outputs from version v1 (Base44 mobile app)
(1) https://kybernetik.ch/en/fs_beer.html