Time Capsule Part 1
Prompt: Pick several objects and come up with meaningful stories around these objects. Try creating a narrative using a popular social media platform or app.
I chose three objects to center my time capsule around. The first object I chose was the book The Arabian Nights. I knew that I wanted to include a book in my time capsule because so many books have had a profound impact on me. The Arabian Nights is not my favorite book, but it is significant because my sister read it to me as a child. The copy I used in my social media narrative was the exact copy I read when I was younger. It was gifted to me by my sister with the inscription, “to remember tenderness.”
I love this object because not only does it represent my love for storytelling, but also my relationship with my siblings. I see my sister not only as a friend but also as a mentor and teacher. She, and my other siblings, helped instill in me a deep appreciation for art and story that has guided me throughout my life. Flipping through the book and looking at the illustrations also helps me get in touch with that childlike wonder we lose as we grow older. I think that experience is why I am so interested in developing children’s entertainment. There is a lot to be said about the power of storytelling in terms of the child’s gaze.
To present my objects, I chose to post photo collages on my Instagram story. I like this presentation method because I can use it to emulate stop motion, and, unlike Instagram posts, it takes up the entire frame of your phone screen. The fact that it takes up the full frame makes it feel much more immersive and intimate. The image below is a combination of the eight images I created for The Arabian Nights. They are meant to be posted one after the other so that when you tap through them, they build off of each other into a final collage as in the rightmost image. Thus, the story shows an evolution from the object to its experience.
The images I layered on top of the base image of the book include the inscription and several illustrations. The first image that gets layered on top is the inscription, illustrating the emotion behind this object. The second image is an illustration of Scheherazade and her sister. The book’s premise is that the sultan of a kingdom vows to take a new wife every day and kill her the following day due to a past betrayal. Scheherazade, the daughter of the sultan’s vizier, marries him and has her sister come to her at night and ask her to tell one last story before she dies. Scheherazade is a fantastic storyteller, but she does not finish the story by morning. So, the sultan permits her to live one more night to hear the end of the story before killing her the following day. However, Scheherazade can do this night after night. Until, after 1001 nights of storytelling, the sultan falls in love with her. The other images that get layered on top are illustrations from some of the stories Scheherazade tells, including Sinbad the Sailor, The Fisherman and The Genie, and The Story of Prince Ahmed and Periebanou. I chose to center the illustration of Scheherazade and her sister because it is a nice parallel to my sister and me. The other illustrations surround this image because they are windows into the beautiful, exciting worlds that come alive through storytelling.
The second object I chose was a plane ticket to Inner Mongolia. I took this trip in the fall of 2019 with a group of friends, and it is still one of the best trips I have ever taken. We flew into the capital, Hohhot, and then spent ten days traveling around the grasslands, the desert, and other parts of the region. The way we planned the trip was part of what made it so special. Once we flew into the capital, our only plan was to see the grasslands and the desert and experience as much of the culture as possible. We mapped out a possible route around the region and then figured out how to get to each town day by day when we got there. This made the trip incredibly unique and forced us to talk to so many different people. We also visited small towns that never got any tourists, so people were very friendly and interested in getting to know us. We met one older couple that told us the last time they saw foreigners was when they were children. We ended up becoming good friends with them and going out for karaoke. I still keep in contact with them to this day.
This trip was spectacular for so many reasons, but I think the most important one is that it was the first time I fully realized what I wanted out of life. I want to be around people I love and know well and throw myself into the unknown. I want to have active experiences and see the world not as a tourist but as a traveler who can fully engage in their surroundings and with the people they are around. No matter what roadblocks or challenges may arise, I want to be able to adapt to them. This trip was also a reminder that the world is not always a scary place and people are much more similar than they are different.
I created a collage of photos from the trip and presented them the same way I presented The Arabian Nights. The image below is a combination of all six posts.
The photos I chose to layer on top of the base image include a picture on the plane to Hohhot, in the desert, and while camping in the grasslands. I wanted to start with us on the plane because we had no idea what to expect or what we were getting ourselves into, and that kind of excitement is now what I hope to feel every time I travel or do something new.
The final object I chose to include in my time capsule was my deck of tarot cards. Tarot is very meaningful to me because I use it as a tool for reflection. I think many people have the impression that tarot is silly or fake because they believe it is meant for divination, but to me, the cards are merely an entry point to get you to think about yourself and where you are in relation to some factor in your life. Since they have such dense symbolism, they can be applied to almost anything and can often force you to look at something in a way that you may not have consciously considered. The entire story that guides the tarot is not mysticism or spirituality but an allegory for the human journey from complete ignorance to wisdom. Tarot is also representative of two of my most significant values: self-awareness and the pursuit of knowledge. The practice of reading tarot thus keeps me grounded and reminds me to always look for areas of growth in my life.
The tarot comprises 78 cards, but I chose to focus on the 22 cards of the Major Arcana in my narrative because they tell the story of the Fool’s journey. The first card is the Fool, and the last card is the World. The Fool is considered the main character of the Major Arcana. The other cards are considered different teachers that the Fool meets along the way to completion as the World.
I chose to frame my Instagram narrative using one card from the Minor Arcana as the base image. I thought this would work well because the card I chose, Seven of Cups, is about choices and, in many ways, life is simply a series of choices. Thus, the story of the Fool’s journey that follows the base image becomes a way to think about and reflect on these choices.
I was very interested in collecting feedback from viewers of my Instagram story on tarot. So, after all of these posts, I posed the following questions to my followers:
- Have you ever read tarot or had your tarot read? (poll: yes/no)
- Were there any cards or ideas that stood out to you? Why?
- Do any of the cards remind you of folktales, sayings, or other stories you know?
- Would you be interested in learning more about the history of tarot? (poll: yes/no)
I added the last two questions because I can see many parallels between the ideas in tarot cards and the ideas embedded in the cultural stories I grew up with, so I was curious to see if this was true for anyone else. I believe many of the lessons discussed in the cards are universal and, historically, they were designed to be that way.
56% of those who voted have either read tarot or had their tarot read by someone else, while 100% of those who voted were interested in learning more about the history of tarot after viewing my story.
Here are some excerpts from the written responses I collected:
- “I really resonated with the lovers and the hermit. I think at first visually, and then after reading the caption, I realized I live internally in my mind and soul a lot… Also, I need to find a balance within myself which is why I like the hermit because I have those tendencies to revert away sometimes, but balance keeps me in check.”
- “High priestess and the ideas of the sun and the moon all resonated with me because of the consciousness aspects.”
- “I would naturally consider the hanged man being hanged instead of doing it of his own free will so that stood out to me.”
- “Tarot reminds me of the Mexican game, Lotería.”
- “Death, strength, temperance but also many others stood out to me. Despite not having any experience with tarot cards and reading, they resemble a lot of notions used in psychotherapy but also Buddhism.”
- “The hierophant, the devil, the moon. The three together represent where I am right now in life.”
- “It reminds me of Adam and Eve, and the birth of the earth.”
I am glad that I chose to collect responses to the questions above because it was great to see how quickly so many people used the cards to reflect on themselves without much prompting. I also got a lot of responses about how many of the cards stood out immediately just through imagery, and then once people read the caption, it made a lot of sense why they were drawn to those specific cards. In many ways, I think this reaffirmed my belief that tarot is a great and very accessible way to practice self-awareness.
The following video illustrates how all three of these narratives look as Instagram stories. On Instagram, each image remains on the screen for 15 seconds before switching to the next image by default, but when you hold a finger down on the screen, you can pause and spend more time looking at the post. If you tap the side of the screen, you can skip through the images faster instead of using the full 15 seconds. The video does not capture this interaction, so it may seem too long. I imagine that viewers tapped through The Arabian Nights and Ticket to Hohhot posts very quickly as there is no text and spent longer viewing the Tarot posts to read the text.
Overall, this was an excellent exercise for me to think about what ideas and values represent who I want to be. The fact that I had to pick a limited number of physical objects and then present them to an audience forced me to discern between what I find meaningful and what just looks cool. I also think that although my three objects are different from each other, they all work together to tell a cohesive story about me. At first, I was wary about having to use social media for this assignment, but I think being forced to deal with the platform’s constraints helped me create a more compelling visual experience. I also had to practice distilling abstract ideas into short and accessible forms when writing the captions for each tarot card. Thus, having only the phone screen as my frame and not being able to scroll or expand a textbox helped me stay concise.
