Playing Arts -
Future Edition
Playing Arts is a global art initiative that brings together renowned artists from around the world to showcase their artistic styles and unique perspectives through the medium of playing cards. The result is a diverse and captivating collection of artwork that celebrates the endless possibilities that can be explored through the simple form of a playing card.
For the Future Edition, 299 international artists, designers, and studios were using playing cards as a canvas to illustrate their vision of what the world would look like 100 years from now.
I was honored to be invited to contribute my vision to their theme, which ignited a great deal of interest and imagination within me. My canvas for this endeavor was the Jack of Clubs, upon which I poured my vision. Allow me to present it together with the story behind it:
In 2120 the face of humanity changed. The overgrowing human population with an overconsumption-based mindset has been the main catalyst for speeding up the sixth mass extinction, therefore darker consequences started to picture a grim future for the entire human species. The massive loss of wildlife and the high volume of deforestation of the Earth’s rainforests has brought unimaginable destruction transforming almost 40% of Earth's surface into a completely uninhabitable environment. A series of deadly viruses and epidemics, chained earthquakes, and heavy tectonic plate movements followed by the great Krakatoa volcanic eruption in 2062, decimated the Earth’s population, putting the entire human civilization on the brink of extinction. The United Earth Consortium’s contingency plan to revitalize and maintain life on Earth is deemed as a complete failure, being unable to provide a sustainable and practical application of Lem’s theorem. At the same time, relocating to Mars was no longer a viable option due to the negative effects on the human body brought by prolonged exposure to solar radiation traveling through the Enselm Corridor, as it seems there is literally no escape. The entire fate of humanity lies now in the hands of a small group of rebel scientists who have managed to alter the genetic information of a carefully selected group of subjects, only four in the entire world. Rising from all the bad humanity has caused thus far, these individuals will be genetically modified in order to be able to access a higher level of intelligence, unimaginable by any standards up to this point. Each of the four individuals (Clubs, Spades, Heart, and Diamonds) has unique and specific abilities that allow them to find viable solutions to restore nature and wildlife and to elevate the entire civilization to new unimaginable heights in technology. The tradeoff for this superpower is that their lifespan was dramatically reduced by 12 years, making them known as the group of Sacrificial Twelve. With these abilities, the plans, the ideas, and the pure knowledge that resulted were astonishing, elevating the entire civilization to new unimaginable heights in technology. As a result, all efforts were redirected to the conservation and preservation of the little that was still left. With the help of super-evolved science and technology, robotic insects, and lab-made miniature creatures, the year 2120 became a solid target of reversing the negative effects. Meat consumption has been legally banned throughout the entire remaining population and conserving Earth’s resources became the new paradigm of human civilization. Planet Earth is reborn, humanity has a permanent shift into a mentality focusing on conservation and respecting Earth's resources, and the sixth mass extinction is successfully reversed.
Do you have a similar project? Let's work together!