Speculating Chinese Daoism with a Card Deck

The intention of this Card Dec is to open up the vision and imagination of “technics” in different cultures and communities. I see it as a toolkit that provokes the design questions for all different professionals and people from different cultural backgrounds. It is a game that families can be playing on a dining table; it is also a game that designers, architects, artists all can play or even can benefit their creative endeavor.

As Nelson indicated in his writing, the way Buber has been translating Chuang Tzu really emphasizes the “narrative presentation of ideas”. It emphasizes the idea of teaching the way in a more “indirect, playful, and poetic dialogical language”. I hope to create a game that the audience could play in a group, interact with each other’s ideas and future speculation. I believe this way of interaction conveys the Daoism philosophy to its fullest.

The Thing from the Future is a set of card dec created by The Situation Lab. It is a speculation game in which the audience could pick up one card from each of the categories to come up with objects in different alternative futures. The game could be played in groups and the outcome of the objects could be exchanged and competed, which leads to the winner of the game.

My version of the game took on the inspiration from both the game, The Thing from the Future, as well as the key concepts of Daoism philosophy.

The whole game can be played between 2–5 people. During the first part of the game, participants will be presented with the game board with the story of Butcher, a story from the Daoism Classic, Chuang Tzu, written on it. There are five concepts card will be placed on the designated slots and the explanation will be facing down. Each participant will randomly choose one concept card. They can read the simple translation and explanation on the back of the card.

Now the mediator will give the player a metaphor card that is matching the concept card. The front of the metaphor card is a graphic that illustrates the metaphor, while the back of the card is the metaphor described in words and a question that helps the person who got the card to think about how to apply this idea into reimagining future technology.

Now, each participant will have one concept card and metaphor card in hand. Here comes the second part of the game. Each participant is going to pick up one card each from the Theme Card category and the Virtue Card category.

The purpose of the theme card is only to helps each player to narrow the speculation they are going to make.

“The Chinese cosmology, based on this resonance, is ultimately a moral cosmology — it is this cosmological view that defines the interaction between humans and the world, in terms of both natural resources and cultural practices (family hierarchy, social and political order, public policies, and human/non-human relations). ” (Hui p50)

Here is another quote from Yuk Hui’s book, The Question Concerning Technology in China, which emphasizes the importance of morality in traditional Chinese cosmology. This value system is different from the current value system, which is to pursue efficiency. I chose five traditional Chinese ethics from traditional Chinese culture: Filial Piety(孝), Trustworthy(信), Politeness(礼), Modest(让), and Braveness(勇).