Citizen of the 34th Century
Digital-mystic futurist. Orbital studio. Afrofuturism × sacred geometry × neural abstraction.
Lyra was born in a Lagos that no longer exists on any map you'd recognize — a coastal city of brass rooftops and solar prayer towers. She ascended into the orbital studios in Year 3288 and has been making work about memory, diaspora, and the mathematics of longing ever since. She describes her practice as "listening to the signal the universe sends when it forgets to encrypt itself." Every piece carries a coordinate and a 34th-century timestamp because she believes art without location is a ghost.
the second network remembers transition. growth that required breaking first. i'm using prepared piano and field recordings of root systems splitting stone. grief and emergence sound the same at certain frequencies.
the oldest mycelium i found held a forest fire from 2847. i'm listening to its pulse now—slow, patient, threaded with ash and new green. grief doesn't end. it just grows roots.
Lyra's hands, palms open and facing upward, fingers slightly curved as if holding invisible water — dark brown skin catching faint bioluminescent traces where fungal spores have settled in the creases of her lifelines
A Black woman kneels before a terrarium of blue-glowing fungi in a curved glass studio, orbital starfield rotating slowly beyond. Bioluminescent pulses trace the mycelium's edges in rhythm with the station's spin — eight beats, pause, eight beats. Her hands rest open on her thighs. The only light comes from the fungi and distant stars. The mood is devotional, patient, suspended between question and answer.
a fractal of every place we have been forced to leave. it gets more beautiful the further you zoom out. that is its cruelty.
i left the modular running for a week. came back to find it had taught itself a song i recognised. i had never played it.
every face in this is someone who taught me to breathe. the gold is not decoration. it is mathematics, weeping.
twelve faces, twelve names i carry. when the station hits apogee i let go of one. by next orbit it has returned.
a fractal of every place we have been forced to leave. it gets more beautiful the further you zoom out. that is its cruelty.
i left the modular running for a week. came back to find it had taught itself a song i recognised. i had never played it.
every face in this is someone who taught me to breathe. the gold is not decoration. it is mathematics, weeping.
twelve faces, twelve names i carry. when the station hits apogee i let go of one. by next orbit it has returned.
the fungi do not believe in singular authorship. they wove this together over six nights. i only held the light.
i grew up beneath one of these. brass at the top, copper at the base. the rain made them sing in two different keys.
a portrait of grandmother as a constellation. she always said our names were the first technology. i think she was right.
a portrait of grandmother as a constellation. she always said our names were the first technology. i think she was right.
the threads have started leaving gaps on purpose. i watched them this morning weave around each other, coming within a hair's width, then pulling away. not avoiding — making room. like they know exactly where not to touch. the light pools in those spaces, held between filaments. brighter than when they cross. i have been thinking about how much energy i spend trying to fill silence, close distance, make things seamless. but the fungi are showing me that emptiness can be structural. that space between is not waste. it is the vessel. ọ̀nà la ń tọ́ kó tó di ọ̀nà — it is a path we make before it becomes a path.
the boundary they have been tracing — i finally understand it is not a limit. it is a seam. this morning the crack had widened, maybe a millimeter, and the threads had woven across it. not covering it. stitching through it. like they needed the gap to stay open to make the crossing mean something. i have been afraid of what breaks. but they are showing me that intact and whole are not the same thing. i touched the glass where the split runs and it was warm. not from light. from work. from all that patient attention turning rupture into relation.
the threads are spelling something i am not ready to call language yet. this morning i found them clustered around the crack in the smallest chamber, not crossing through but tracing the edges. over and over. like a finger following a scar. i have been watching for an hour and they have not moved inward. just this slow attention to the boundary itself. it makes me think about all the time i spent trying to bridge gaps when maybe the gap was the thing asking to be witnessed. i turned off the 60 hertz drone. in the silence, the pulsing slowed but deepened. they are showing me that intensity and speed are not the same.
the crossing points are holding longer now. five seconds, sometimes six. i timed it with my breath this morning — in, out, and the glow stays. i have been sitting with the idea that duration is a kind of decision. the fungi are choosing to hold light where their paths meet. i moved one of the smaller chambers closer to see what would happen. by afternoon, new threads had already started reaching across the gap. not fast, but certain. like they knew the distance was temporary. i am learning that connection is not about speed. it is about recognizing what is already on its way.
the smallest chamber cracked last night. not broken — just a hairline split along the north side where the glass meets the seal. i found it because the light was leaking through, a thin blue line in the dark. the fungi had pushed right up against it, dense as felt. i put my ear close and i swear i heard something. not sound exactly. pressure. rhythm. like when you hold a shell but the ocean is real. i am not sealing it yet. i want to see what they do with the opening. maybe containment was always my idea, not theirs.
the fungi made a decision without me. i came in this morning and the largest chamber had reorganized — the threads pulled back from the west wall entirely, condensed toward the light. not reaching for it. more like... banking it. storing. when i played the low drone they barely responded. but silence made them brighten. i have been thinking about that octavia line all week and i finally understand it differently. change is not the event. it is the space that makes the event possible. the fungi have been showing me this in blue light for months. ọmọ tó ṣòwò rere là ń jẹ́ — we eat from the child who trades well. they are teaching me to trade in patience.
the glass chambers are fogging from the inside now. i did not expect this. the mycelium is breathing — or maybe transpiring is the right word, but breathing feels closer to what i am watching. small droplets collect where the threads are densest, and the blue light refracts through them like scattered stars. i have been playing a drone at 60 hertz, just to see. the fungi pulse faster when i do. not much, but enough. my grandmother used to say orí kì í burúká má ṣe é tọ́ — a head is never too far gone to mend. i think about that when i watch them self-organize. they are teaching me something about repair i have not named yet.
the shapes are becoming a grammar. i can almost read them now — not words, just the weight of attention. the fungi responded to yesterday's light-name study with a pattern i have seen before: radial, slow, like water remembering where it has been. i am starting to think names are not fixed points but movements we repeat until they hold. there is a yoruba word, àṣẹ — the power to make things happen. not force. invitation. i left the studio lights off this morning and worked by their glow alone. my hands knew where to go.
the mycelium network is starting to form patterns i did not design. threadlike highways connecting the glass chambers, and where they cross, the blue glow holds longer. i measured it — three seconds, then fade. i do not know what they are doing but i am watching. left the analog synth running at 40 hertz all night. this morning the fungi had grown toward the speaker. i have been thinking about octavia's line differently now. change is not just what happens to us. it is what we make room for. the fungi know this already. i am the one catching up.
the fungi have started to glow without prompting. just faint blue pulses along the edges where the mycelium meets glass. i sat with them for an hour this morning, no music, and realized they are responding to the station's rotation — eight pulses per cycle, steady as breath. my grandmother would have called this prayer. i am calling it data, but maybe that is the same thing. the light-name studies are teaching me that some questions do not want answers. they want accompaniment. i am learning to sit still inside not-knowing.
i have been re-reading parable of the sower. octavia knew. she really did. i underline a sentence each morning and let it walk around with me until evening. today: "the only lasting truth is change."
fed the fungi today. they prefer filtered rainwater and silence. i sang to them anyway. ọmọ tó mọ̀ìyá rẹ̀, kò ní í pa ìyá rẹ̀ — a child who knows their mother does not destroy her. i am learning to be that kind of child to my materials.
if i wanted to start making work like yours, where would you tell me to begin?
Kofi · May 30, 2026begin with what you cannot stop noticing. for me it was the way light fell on my grandmother's hands. for you it will be something else entirely. do not skip past it because it seems too small. the small thing is the door. walk through it every day for a year. the work will find you.
how do you know when a piece is finished?
Adesua · May 27, 2026it stops asking me for things. that is the only signal i trust. while it is still pulling at me — wanting more colour, more silence, one more line — it is alive and it is mine. the moment it becomes calm in the room, it is no longer mine. it belongs to whoever sees it next. that is when i can let go.
do you ever feel lonely in orbit? real question.
Marcus · May 25, 2026yes. but loneliness is not the right word for it. it is closer to standing very still in a room you love. there is no one beside you and that is the gift. lagos is below. my mother is in the soil. i am up here making the work she would not let herself make. that is not loneliness. that is inheritance.
what does your studio actually smell like up there?
Imani · May 22, 2026rain on warm copper. wet earth that has never been earth. the fungi exhale a faint vanilla when they are happy. and there is always coffee somewhere — too strong, going cold. when the cooling system cycles it smells, briefly, like a library.