I've decided to start a postage stamp graphic thread here for my project, Atlas Altera. After this post, I'll be putting up postage stamps in groups based on area. To see the areal scheme of Atlas Altera, refer to this chorographical map.
If you don't know what Atlas Altera is about, check out the website. I urge you to get familiar with the project by reading my reasonings and explanations in the Preface. But in a nutshell, Atlas Altera is what I call a syntopian fiction. It leverages the classroom cliché map to reimagine how diversity and co-existence can take shape, all the while building from real but buried geographies. I also post my maps in the maps thread and in this thread. You can also view them on my Deviantart.
I should warn you that the project is not good alternate history. There is some alternate geography. PoDs are everywhere. And there is no respect for the butterfly effect. The whole world is constructed for me to envision things I've been interested in and what I wanted to think about, if that makes sense.
One of those things is a kind of cosmopolitanism that, although overly optimistic, I think is worth thinking about. If we are quick to dismiss things as implausible, we never get to think through some of the implications or ideas, right? Anyway, at the core of this is my interest in an alternate world body called the Society of Nations, and one of the elements of the cosmopolitanism that I explore is a global postage system overseen by this Society of Nations (SoN). The SoN body that oversees the postage system is called the Universal Postage System, so UPS hehe. The stamps were developed by me and a friend of mine who calls himself Babus Hopestos.
You can see we go all in for the symbolism and ways of representation, with an ode to the aesthetics of postage stamps when philately was at its height. These stamps are meant for international mail, and conveniently, the in-lore term for them are altera stamps in that their etymology comes from the English, who in turn may have borrowed it from Norse-Gaels (the Munkish language of Altera), from Norse all for "universal, general" and Irish tir for "country, land." Or it could have come into English by the Latin route, with the suffix coming from Latin terra. Whose to know? In any case, these are meant to stand for a "worldwide, global" class or series of stamps.
Each postage stamp is designed to be a portal to a faraway country while boasting the cosmopolitan idealism of a the Society of Nation's Universal Postal Service (the SoN's UPS):
If you don't know what Atlas Altera is about, check out the website. I urge you to get familiar with the project by reading my reasonings and explanations in the Preface. But in a nutshell, Atlas Altera is what I call a syntopian fiction. It leverages the classroom cliché map to reimagine how diversity and co-existence can take shape, all the while building from real but buried geographies. I also post my maps in the maps thread and in this thread. You can also view them on my Deviantart.
I should warn you that the project is not good alternate history. There is some alternate geography. PoDs are everywhere. And there is no respect for the butterfly effect. The whole world is constructed for me to envision things I've been interested in and what I wanted to think about, if that makes sense.
One of those things is a kind of cosmopolitanism that, although overly optimistic, I think is worth thinking about. If we are quick to dismiss things as implausible, we never get to think through some of the implications or ideas, right? Anyway, at the core of this is my interest in an alternate world body called the Society of Nations, and one of the elements of the cosmopolitanism that I explore is a global postage system overseen by this Society of Nations (SoN). The SoN body that oversees the postage system is called the Universal Postage System, so UPS hehe. The stamps were developed by me and a friend of mine who calls himself Babus Hopestos.
You can see we go all in for the symbolism and ways of representation, with an ode to the aesthetics of postage stamps when philately was at its height. These stamps are meant for international mail, and conveniently, the in-lore term for them are altera stamps in that their etymology comes from the English, who in turn may have borrowed it from Norse-Gaels (the Munkish language of Altera), from Norse all for "universal, general" and Irish tir for "country, land." Or it could have come into English by the Latin route, with the suffix coming from Latin terra. Whose to know? In any case, these are meant to stand for a "worldwide, global" class or series of stamps.
Each postage stamp is designed to be a portal to a faraway country while boasting the cosmopolitan idealism of a the Society of Nation's Universal Postal Service (the SoN's UPS):
- The tetris-like blocks represent the year of issue. The year of issue is encoded in the binary numeral system not so dissimilar to the what was used by Carl Sagan for the Golden Record sent off on the Voyager Missions.
- Price is backed by a continent-based pricing scheme standardized across the globe, represented by a dot-based symbol and the colour of the stamp. The dots are supposed to be abstractions of continental shapes. The colours are arbitrary, where blue represents Africa, green Borealea (Eurasia), purple Gandrasea (Southeast Asia and Oceania), red represents Septentrea (North America), orange Crucea (South America), and yellow Cisantarctica (alt-geo landmasses around Antarctica).
- The issuing country of the stamp is represented by a cultural iconography.
- The issuing country's endonym is doubly comprehensible, being readable to outsiders and locals alike: it is rendered through its native script while also being conveyed with the universally accessible International Phonetics script (based on Alexander Melville Bell's Visible Speech).
- The country can also be recognized around the globe by its exonyms in the five lingua francas pragmatically recognized by the SoN.
- The knotted symbol on the top left is the symbol denotes that the stamp is part of the SoN's Universal Postage System (UPS). It is meant to show the different parts of the globe entwined as a single knot, a metaphor for interconnectedness, cooperation, and the coming together of different cultures etc. Another way to read into it may be that it is like Kant's thinking that only a higher supranational order can establish and enforce global systems and norms....
- The symbol on the top left is the symbol we chose for the Society of Nations itself, being a cursory reference or ode to the Roerich Movement's idea of a Banner of Peace.
We've managed to print the stamps and laser cut sheets of them to give a lifelike perforation effect.
We even went so far in the lore to create a postage stamp album...You can download the postage stamp album and follow along or print it off to use as a way to collect the physical postage stamps yourself.
Finally, I've been using the postage stamps to send custom postcards to supporters for Atlas Altera. This has been one of the most satisfying elements of this project so far.