02 The Inner Carbon Classic

The Inner Carbon Classic

2024
GAME IN DEVELOPMENT
Estimated length: 60 min

Directing, Writing - Wendi Yan
3D Modeling, Art Direction - Wendi Yan
Level Design - Yi Xie
Interaction Programming - Yi Xie
Animating - Wendi Yan

Support by The Steve Jobs Archive

The Inner Carbon Classic is a puzzle game about aligning individual breath with planetary circulation. Set in an indefinite future, the game pretends to be a facsimile of the “Internal Carbonic Alchemy” that reharmonized the planetary breath in the 21st century. The player becomes a character inside a dynamic world-scripture, performing the procedure of three stages of “Internal Carbonic Alchemy.”

It is a cosmotechnic practice combining Daoist body-ecological philosophy with climate biotechnology, bringing the player on a journey to feel their oneness with Earth, linking personal breath to planetary circulation. It presents a cosmic ecology, in which meditation becomes an action, and scripture powers technology.

The Inner Carbon Classic is based on a classic image, Chart of the Inner Landscape (Neijing Tu), which uses a collaged landscape to illustrate the inner workings of the human body. Practitioners of Daoist Inner Alchemy (a real and still practiced tradition) meditate on that diagram to push “vital energy” from the Tailbone Gate (Coccyx) to the mountains of the brain, transcending by the Daoist “Third Eye.”

Using this diagram as a philosophical frame, the game shifts attention to Earth. At a time when an atmospheric element becomes integrated into the global financial system, this game is concerned with the question of cosmophilosophy in the geoengineering project of reharmonizing the earth’s circulatory system—specifically its carbon cycles.

How can geoengineering be exercised in alignment with spiritual beliefs and practices? This game attempts to develop a sense organ to connect the individual human body with Earth’s body, via breathing, in play.