an evolving practice
Hi, I’m Sarah Barns.
This is a basic_space for my current enquiry_led practice examining how storied-connections can be cultivated between people, places, and habitats, against a backdrop of an emerging agentic civics.
More about me
I'm a cultural geographer, digital-maker, public artist, researcher, curator. I co-founded Studio ESEM and STORYBOX.CO, and am the author of Platform Urbanism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). I'm currently pursuing a a Vice Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellowhip at RMIT University's Centre for Urban Research. My PhD, awarded c2011, used archival listening practices to disrupt an emerging politics of the smart city, based within the field of public history. This is a kind of scratch pad for my research explorations and musings, and experiments, c2025 onwards. Older 'me' is still at sarahbarns.me
Recent writing
- Noticing what Anthropic are doing
All I can do is watch and wonder and make a video player.
- From Platform Urbanism to Civic AI
At a presentation at the American Association of Geography (AAG) conference in San Francisco I spoke on my pivot from platform urbanism to civic AI enablement.
- Curating Sovereignties: Mapping AI Factories
How I'm thinking about AI sovereignty.
- Gathering Intelligences and Agencies: Designing for Multi-Species Encounter
What kinds of intelligences and sense-making capabilities do we need to cultivate in ourselves, as we learn to adapt to these newer kinds of agencies?.
- Her Place: Safety, Gender, and Public Space
Notes on designing a STORYBOX program around women's perceptions of safety in public spaces — for the NSW Safer Cities grant.
- Community Walls and Digital Commons
Deploying STORYBOX at the Inner West Museum of Rugby League — QR codes, Cloudflare Workers, and what civic storytelling actually looks like when it's live.
- Still Here: Excavating Sites of Encounter
Early notes on a book structured as topographical excavation — six modes of encounter (listening, reading, installing, diagnosing, gathering, letting go) across twenty years of work.
- Towards Civic AI? Examining the potential for civic learning systems
Examining the emergence of civic AI as a framework for civic learning and community health
- Real Times of Space: Revisiting the PhD
Returning to the ideas behind my doctoral work — ambient sound archives, mobile listening experiences, and contested spatial histories as experimental public history.
- Altered States: Conversations with otherselves in the ambient surrounds
A workshop with Professor Annette Markham on emergent states of attentional curation