Transhumanism Playing Cards

Transhumanism Project produced the “Transhumanism: The Prediction” Act for the Taipei Arts Festival in 2019 and unveiled it for the first time. This ongoing three-year project was co-created by magician Sean Chou, director Yu Dian Chen, and visual art designer Wei Wang, in an attempt to explore genuine and extraordinary abilities in areas other than magic. Sean Chou develops a variety of superpowers through a series training, body modification, developing, awakening and cyborg organism. This is to respond to significant topics such as: human, society, and psychology, and to discover the true meaning of humanity to this world.

Transhumanism Shuriken

This deck of cards is designed specifically for Transhumanism Project. One specific part of the act, “sleight,” was inspired by and described a random killing spree incident that happened in Taiwan back in 2014. As a magician, Sean Chou thought about the possibility of playing cards being used as a destructive weapon if he encounters the same incident, which inspired him to start training for card throwing. In addition to games and performing magic, Sean tries to make playing cards become an extension of his body and explore the possibility of them becoming a weapon.

Words from designer Wei Wang

Since the beginning of the project, Transhumanism had made its attempt to “deflesh” itself, leaving only the body shell. Thus, we decided to start from zero: typography, color coordination, suits, numbers, lines on the card back, and we even designed the court cards to exist in a formless style.

We started from the magic that we are most familiar with, the space that blends both reality and illusion. We tried to develop the state of zero to the extreme, fusing Genesis Myth and the meaningful astrological symbols into the totem design, metallic ink reflection represents reflexive reflection, black and silver foil on premium black cardboard stock, and finally processed it with a braille embosser. There are countless details and codes for you to enjoy, or you could simply enjoy the texture of vintage stock and the smooth legendary finish that has the perfect resilience for you to handle.

Printed in Taiwan by Hanson Chien Production Co.