Chapter 3: The Dead Cities

Out of the chaos of the Re-jig the scattered remnants of humanity emerged, forming nomadic tribes who scavenged the waste mountains and dead cities for their basic needs, using foraged tech, plastics, metals, and fabrics for clothing, tools and shelter. As these NeoTribes grew they began to realise the potential of Spore and slowly but surely, despite the hardship of this new existence, these tribes have flourished into vibrant and peaceful communities, celebrating the rebirth of the planet and its surviving cultures.

Because of the Spore-rich air respiratory masks have become an essential component of our existence - the masks are many and varied, each tribe and clan adopting their own styles and preferences, but beneath the masks lie humans who still laugh and cry and smile and frown. Our masks and garments are both functional but also expressive and symbolic. Masks protect us but they also connect us. More on this later…

The Dead Cities are the scavenging grounds for many tribes, clans, sects and crews. A common element present in all of these groups are the highly revered Scribes, who venture out in the Spore-filled air to paint the broken city corpses. Where once there was charred ruin now there is colour and life as the Scribes create their living graffiti, BioGraff, fashioned with materials derived from Spore such as mycelial clay, photoplastic and mushfoam. Where the Scribes go the clans and tribes soon follow and the reclaimed streets have become gathering points for traders from all over the WasEarth. These Carnival Markets are vibrant and colourful and can be heard pulsing from the glowing city bones.

The only conflict is artistic - a Scribe’s mantra is to create beauty from decay and the Colourbombers and blatclans are always trying to upstage the work of other crews. As a result the urban wastes have become a vast canvas of living art, both physical and sonic.

Documented here are portraits of some of the most renowned Scribes, whose peices have become the stuff of legend, their BioGraff glowing in testament to the defiant power of the human spirit.