TECH. ARTS. COMMUNITY.
Mantej Kaur
Designer, Explorer and Creator
Mantej Kaur is a Master's student in New Media Design at the National Institute of Design. With a background in Interaction Design, she is fueled by curiosity and a passion for exploring diverse creative avenues. She enjoys experimenting with physical mediums and mixed media to bring her ideas to life.
Challenges
10
Neoflora
For this challenge, we had invited the fellows to bring their final projects to life through the powerful mediums of either a short film or a graphic novel. Mantej’s work Neoflora is a speculative graphic novel set in a future city engineered for harmony with nature, where birds share the skies with towers, and technology holds nature in delicate balance.
9
For challenge 9, the fellows presented a pitch deck of their visual narratives. These narratives, set in 2050, address a conflict in an ideal future and its resolution. The pitch will serve as a storyboard for the final project, presented as either a short film or graphic novel. Mantej’s project titled The Neoflora City presents Ahmedabad in 2050. It has bloomed into a neoflora city where people live in harmony with birds and nature. Maena Ved is the protagonist of the story who notices glitches in the birds’ movements.
8
Challenge 8 was a fun exercise in which the fellows generated interactive AI personas using the Gooey.AI copilot tool. Mantej’s bot, Maena Ved, is a 21-year-old eco-tech inventor from the Neoflora city of Ahmedabad. Curious, creative, and endlessly inspired by nature, Maena is the youngest engineer at Neoflora, the visionary company founded by her idol, Iora Sen. She builds playful, intelligent inventions that respond to the natural world
7
After an engaging workshop with Nina Sabnani, the fellows applied their imagination to craft a narrative using five images that Nina gave as prompts. Mantej weaves a tender story of love, loss, and relentless loyalty. Tara, a young girl undertakes a courageous journey through unfamiliar roads and crowded cities to bring home her dog Jugnu.
6
For this challenge, we wanted the fellows to create supporting characters that would inhabit their envisioned future world. Mantej created two supporting characters - Lora Sen and Kahu Verne. Lora is a brilliant ornithologist and environmental engineer, who reimagined cities as sanctuaries for flight, sparking a global movement before her untimely and mysterious death. Kahu is a master strategist with a capitalist's eye, who transformed Iora’s dream into a profit-driven empire, turning nature into spectacle and cities into curated green luxuries.
5
Fellows developed characters who would live in their imagined future worlds. Mantej created the character of Maena Ved, a newly recruited junior engineer at Flornia Industries, the company responsible for converting cityscapes into self-sustaining bird sanctuaries. Growing up in the dense, tech-driven sprawl of New Ahmadabad, she spent her childhood on rooftops, watching the sky filled with migrating birds.
4
For this challenge, we wanted fellows to continue building on their explored futures, focusing on world building. We wanted them to visualise it as the opening scene of a sci-fi film, where the focus is on the setting rather than the characters. 5 to 6 frames were created using Gooey's Animation Generator in draft mode (2 FPS). Mantej has captured a high rise building roof with a miniature forest, teeming with bird nests, small ponds, and self-sustaining ecosystems.
3
For this challenge, we had asked the fellows to illustrate their peers’ predictions for the future. Mantej illustrated the prediction about a futuristic Mumbai with vertical forests; and another city from the dystopian future.
2
We asked the fellows to explore what the future would look like. We also asked them to forecast a series of predictions for the next few years, with a timeline of no more than 25 years ahead. Mantej made the following predictions about the future. By the year 2045, Brain computer interfaces will be able to merge with Emotional AI to create communication systems that are thought-to-speech and hence, seamless. This tech will allow neural signals to be translated into expressive, natural speech. It will be able to bridge the communication gap for stroke survivors, ALS patients and neurodivergent people. By the year 2045, cities will be intelligent and adaptive ecosystems. Artificial Intelligence would be used to project signals visible to birds (patterns, UV light, sound cues) to gently steer away birds from collision prone areas.Urban planning by that time will be moving towards more biophilic design. Buildings might have green corridors and tree integrated architecture. This will give birds natural flight pathways that they can easily navigate.
