Demonstration of the Liminal Space Tarot DeckAnthony Rosa, Creator of the Liminal Space Tarot deck
Thursday, September 14, 7:00 pm
Suggested Donation: $5
"Take a trip through the oddly-familiar memories you've never had. Was it reality... or a dream?" Those two sentences describe the typical feelings and thoughts evoked by the strange and uncanny images throughout the Liminal Space Tarot Deck. According to Wikipedia, Liminal Spaces are the subject of an internet aesthetic portraying empty or abandoned places that appear eerie, forlorn, and often surreal. Liminal Spaces are commonly places of transition or nostalgic appeal.
The Liminal Space Tarot deck is based on the original Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot Deck, but uses images of places instead of people to communicate the meanings. These images are open to creative interpretation, but every suit has a theme from the popular Liminal Space universe on the internet. Pentacles are represented by Suburbs and Commercial areas, Cups are the poolrooms and pipe-works, Swords are the Backrooms and abstract art, and Wands are the Art-rooms and the Playrooms. Many of these images were inspired by scenes from the Covid lockdowns, such as empty stores and casinos, and they have an aura of relatable loneliness that is strangely comforting. But some of the images have potential for psychological horror.
Creator of the deck Anthony Rosa writes: The Liminal Space Tarot deck was born from a combination of opportunity and passion. I discovered liminal spaces, particularly poolrooms, in 2022 and spent days watching videos about these unsettling places that somehow soothed my aching soul. Not long after that, I met a young man who made an oracle deck with spectacular imagery of archaic art, using AI image generation. I've already been fascinated by AI developments for years now, but this gave me the idea to do something no one else has done before: make a genuine tarot deck based on liminal spaces, all as one person, through the use of artificial intelligence, complex image editing, knowledge of tarot, and an eye for beauty and meaning. You may think, "Oh, you used AI. Then it was easy." That couldn't be more wrong. It took hundreds of hours of hard work, including learning new skills like prompt engineering and photo editing, as well as sifting through a thousand generations of images to find the very best one for each card. Without AI, it would never have been possible for the creative power of an individual like me to feasibly compete on a more even playing field with corporations like US Games. What a liberating thought for our future...
In the Liminal Space Tarot deck, you follow the Fool's Journey through uncanny places. Can the Fool survive without succumbing to the pure, nonsensical madness surrounding them, conjured from the abyssal depths of the void?
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