Intimacy Game
Gloss Paper
A5
2019
In a culture where the visual information is more prevalent than sound because we don’t have time to carefully absorb the information, images are being proliferated more than ever in history before. We are drowning in this overload of information and every day we find new ways to stand up from the rest. For that reason, when texting started to be a thing, people started to be creative with the punctuation signs in order to express themselves more clearly. This started because a lot of messages were not being completely understood. When you use text more than you use speech you got to understand the limitations of the text on its own and translating full everyday speech to text was a struggle. We evolved from this - : ) - to this J. And now we have a language of its own, to the point where people, specially teenager no longer communicate through words, but mostly through this small images. From flags, to animals or food, we can find and create a new design every day. It’s such a dynamic language as any other. In some sense these emojis – as they are referred to – create some kind of intimacy between people when texting. We are more likely to connect with an expressive person than with a person that does not use emojis at all in our friendly talks. Using text on its own looks very formal and cold.
Emojis seemed a very important feature about our online relationships to leave it on the side. It brings a human side to the computer language. Emojis are also very playful and are important to define the line between friends or more than friends. For that reason, I found it appropriate to take it away from its digital medium and make like a pocket game that you can use everywhere, something to help you and give you a tutorial on what to use when you want to express x, y or z feeling. These game had inspiration on trading cards, as if I give you an “red heart” I will get more love. And the player can trade a lot of other feelings.
Also, most of the emojis represented are the ones used for sexting. For me it is very interesting to understand how people are portraying sex in internet culture because sex is the ultimate intimate and bonding act for human beings even if it is polarized nowadays.
These cards are trading intimacy and can be compared to a lot of pocket sex toys as in “a case of emergency” to develop online relationships.