Two Kinds of Love

It’s the year 2065, and the world’s environment has deteriorated to a critical point. A suffocating blanket of smoke covers the land, choking life itself. Your fate depends entirely on your status in society—either you’re left to perish and die in the oppressive smoke and heat, or you gain access to the revolutionary AI technology that creates an alternate reality for you, allowing you to live in a fabricated utopia.

In such times, two people exchange postcards because they cannot see each other in person due to their vastly different income brackets. The inherent systemic inequalities of society have created physical barriers that keep them apart. One comes from a wealthy family, while the other struggles to survive with barely enough to stay alive.

Building on this narrative of a speculative future, we began to develop the world these characters inhabit, exploring questions like: How do the characters know each other? How long have they been connected? What is the central conflict, if any? Where does each character live? What makes one place a utopia and the other a dystopia? These questions guide us in shaping the nuances of their lives and the divided world they navigate.

At the same time the story is not entirely speculative. It also draws heavily from our own personal lived experiences. Having grown up in Delhi, India, I have spent my entire life witnessing how, as soon as October arrives, a thick blanket of smog envelops the city, obscuring everything from view. We would often get days off from school because of the pollution and the air pollution has gotten worse with the years. This ever-present environmental reality serves as a stark reminder of the fragility of our surroundings and heavily informs the world-building in the narrative, blending fiction with the lived consequences of environmental degradation. It is also informed by the class differences present in society and how it tends to divide people. This is a story about overcoming these divides and how people from different backgrounds show love through different means.

After determining what we wanted the story to be, the next question was about translating all that information in the form of postcards. How many postcards should we make? What would the last postcard be about? How does the tone change as time goes by? Where are the characters situated when they send each postcard?

Once we had a clear vision for the story, the next challenge was figuring out how to translate it into the format of postcards. How many postcards should there be? What story does the final postcard tell? How does the tone evolve over time? Where are the characters located when they send each postcard? These questions guided the process of shaping the narrative through this unique medium. Each postcard exchange reveals an altered visual scene reflecting the environment the characters inhabited. There are three postcards each from both of the characters and one anonymous postcard at the end which the viewer can interpret as being sent by either one of them.

These postcards are not just exchanges of words; they are deeply personal windows into the characters' lives and their relationship, layered with warmth, love, and conflict. Through each postcard, the characters share fragments of their world—offering glimpses of their lives. Despite the physical and societal barriers that separate them, the warmth in their messages reflects the profound connection they share. At the same time, their differing circumstances inevitably give rise to tensions as they’re not able to be there with each other. The contrast between their lives—the privilege of one and the relentless struggles of the other—creates an undercurrent of conflict. The person in utopia willing to give up everything to fight for their love and the person in dystopia growing flowers for the other even in the deteriorating conditions.

The 3D environments these characters inhabit are all modelled in Unreal Engine. The visual effects reflect a transition from a utopian to a dystopic existence through colour grading and touchdesigner effects. Lastly, the project is compiled as an archive book with the postcards interspersed with pressed flowers, leaves, images and an artifact. Both the characters are trying to see the world as the other in order to find each other. All the images sent by one are dreamy while the other shows the harsh reality of the world.

The songs tiny dancer by Elton John and Unknown/Nth by Hozier were used within this project.