CREATIVES

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KINSHIP

Others
Human evolution has been a performance of bricolage, through imagination, creation and reflection, we have made do and made the most.

Kinship the game, aims to inspire new narratives and explore new horizons of the human imagination. Anchored in the design of traditional card games in conjunction with the use of artificial intelligence, Kinship asks: how might we playfully reimagine our perspectives and push the limits of our possible futures?

Emerging out of necessity, the initial prompt asked, what technology may be used to facilitate conversations that honor diverse lived experiences and dimensions of reality, which may afford new perspectives with the ultimate goal of ethical and empathetic futures based on grounded reflection in the present.

Honoring my Egyptian and urban upbringing, I recalled the joy and intuition of connection surrounding card games. Making recognition of the history of the traditional deck, which evolved through story-telling, community, and resourcefulness, all the more meaningful.

Adding layers of dimension, the design began to reflect heritage, history, and futurism. Divided to four suits: Time, Mind, Senses, and Life. Reflective of the totality of the human experience and embedded with hieroglyphic iconography, representative of the early days of human craftsmanship and symbolic storytelling. Through reiteration of the traditional card design system, the game engages memory and imagination. With a traditional deck, no instructions are provided, and artifacts of memory and storytelling are reignited through the group of players deciding how they wish to approach gameplay. Similarly Kinship invites a DIY approach to storytelling, providing an individualized experience for individuals or groups seeking to make new connections and generate new ideas.

The imagery of the game viscerally employs mysticism, surrealism, and abstraction as a means of cultural provocation. Through months of experimentation with various artificial intelligence image generators and analog methods of making, DALL- E was chosen to make images for thematic suits. Images motifs were primarily meant as a means of promoting inter-intelligence collaboration, further pushing the boundaries of human imagination and anointed ideation. The written prompts were developed pedagogically to engage and identify mental models and first principle thinking on a sensory level. Envisioned as a means of time-travel, the questions engage human memory, subconscious experiences, and unsettling connections to unravel new frameworks for seeing the world. The ace of each suit offers diagrammatic representations of the aforementioned pedagogy, acting as a compass for traveling through the tangible, experiential, and unimaginable realms of individual and collective worlds.

The aspirations of the game are unfounded, similar to the definition of Kinship, the game is embedded as the seed for a web of relationships that expose ancestral technologies (e.g. writing, narrating, connecting) with new provocations. Primarily inquiring “what kind of ancestors do we wish to be?” This seed is planted with the hope that the tree and fruits that blossom are trans-media and interdisciplinary. Could this card game be the catalyst for a short film? Could the film lead to the generation of new technologies? Would those technologies emerge from indigenous and ancestral knowledge? Which artists might want to reimagine the visual representations of kinship? Are they landscape artists? How could biomimetics be involved? What of eco-futurism?

Founder & CD | Hana Azab
Brand Identity | Carolina Uscategui

Product Mockup

Card Spread

Product Mockup

Tentative UX

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