Transmission 15.4: THE PALINDROME'S OBJECT
This is a newsletter for designers and time travel facilitators. It has insights about the speculative practice & tools we use in our method that they could try as well. Today we see the layers.
PALINDROME is, depending on the order in which you use it, a speculative design toolkit or a game of futures. We are finally releasing the game this spring <3
The upcoming Transmissions series (15.1, .2, .3, .4, and .5) will each focus on a stage of the work we are doing towards the game’s first irl play on May 31st at the Danish Design Center.
The upcoming transmissions are:
15.1 Collect & Research (April 22nd) Transmitted! Get it here.
15.2 Narrative (May 6th) Transmitted! Get it here.
15.3 Dynamics (May 20th) Transmitted! Get it here.
15.4 Object (June 3rd)
15.5 Outcome–Launch (Updated: June 10th)
INTRO
Let’s imagine the world of Palindrome like a tunnel or a rabbit’s hole– every time you complete a step, you dig deeper. This a two-fold experience: an experience of diving into a process and inside yourself.
INSIDE OBJECT
To translate the idea of a rabbit’s hole into a physical container, we imagined a box structured in layers– every time you close a step you get access to the layer beneath, and another phase of the game starts.
We designed the object’s layers following the four main steps of the game:
Entrance
Artifact
Deconstruction
Future
1. Entrance - A gift
We imagined ourselves experiencing the Palindrome object with the same eyes of someone who has just received a present… feelings of surprise, gratitude, and excitement come up. We brought this feeling into the design, selecting glittery and translucent surfaces, and wrapping the box as a present that has been shipped to you.
Since a ‘palindrome’ is the main concept that informs the design, the shape of the box is a square recalling the typical shape of a magic square with palindrome inscriptions.
2. Artifact - A puzzle
The story, as we have outlined it in past transmissions, is a found artifact that is deconstructed; deconstruction means ‘to imagine what this artifact is about’.
The game of Tangram was a great inspiration to design the physical object in this step. The Tangram is a dissection puzzle consisting of seven flat polygons, called tans, which are put together to form shapes.
In our design, each piece of the puzzle corresponds to a part of the story of the artifact. In which time does it live? How does it get activated? What is its purpose?
Inside the game, the glimpse of the artifact has, to us, the same meaning of the word ‘Tangram’: “an odd, intricately contrived thing, that once deconstructed leads you to a new whole story”.
3. Deconstruction - Book, cards, gameflow.
In order to navigate the deconstruction we use classic game tools that activate the “Palindrome machine”.
A book acts as a storyteller and manual of instructions for the gamemaster.
A library of cards shows all the artifacts from The Time Travel Agency and Palindrome’s world.
A map and a gameflow track players’ journey.
4. Future - A surprise!
As we said at the beginning of this transmission, the experience of Palindrome feels like a gift or a surprise. Well, for the last step, a final revelation is hidden at the bottom of the box. Players will find out their position in Palindrome, and their future. Here we can only hint ;)
DURING THIS STAGE <3
Note on these transmissions:
The Time Travel Transmissions will transmit elsewhere between July and September– they will be getting ready to run–host a monthly hybrid Palindrome game that will stretch for 4 months or so. Every recipient will be able to participate. More soon <3