Snow Shhans
Through what are different beings distinguished?
Snow Shhans explores how different beings are distinguished through a white-cat species that contrasts with the black Mimics. A contrast that begins with outward appearance clarifies the identities of both groups, while distinct forms and traits also produce individual beings within the same species.
Snow Shhans was conceived as a generative art project that would create a new cat species opposite to [Mimic Shhans](/projects/mimic-shhans). In contrast to the black-bodied Mimics, these beings have white bodies; the name ‘Snow’ likewise began with this visual opposition.
The origin of Snow lies in [The SHHAN](/projects/the-shhan). That world contained two different species—black cats and white cats. SHHAN carried the setting of the white cats into the world of [Mimic Shhans](/projects/mimic-shhans) and sought to develop them into a new group.
When only the black Mimics existed, their black bodies were one feature among those that constituted them. The moment an opposing white being appears, however, color becomes more than an outward trait: it becomes a criterion by which the two are distinguished. Through the contrasts between black and white, Mimic and Snow, each group acquires a clearer identity in its difference from the other.
Snow was not designed as the repetition of a single white-cat form. Differences in eyes, horns, halos, masks, clothing, and equipment distinguish individuals within the same species. A difference separates one group from another, while smaller differences within that group distinguish its members once again.
Through this structure, Snow Shhans extends the question of individuality begun in [Mimic Shhans](/projects/mimic-shhans). If [Mimic Shhans](/projects/mimic-shhans) experimented with the creation of numerous distinct individuals from a single archetype, Snow Shhans creates another group in opposition to that archetype and asks whether the identity of a being is formed by itself, or becomes clearer when it encounters a being unlike itself.
The project was planned as a large generative collection of 10,000 different individuals. SHHAN designed the base character and multiple traits, prepared the combinatorial system, and developed the work toward an actual release.
The project’s preparation coincided with a rapid contraction of the NFT market. SHHAN continued to reconsider the timing of its release but ultimately decided not to issue the collection. Snow Shhans ended as an unreleased project, leaving its prepared designs and setting behind.
The fact that it was never launched does not exclude Snow Shhans from SHHAN’s practice. The project preserves the process of attempting to expand a world that began with one character collection into a world inhabited by different species. In moving from the making of one kind of being to the creation of another, and reconsidering each identity through that difference, Snow Shhans records one path along which SHHAN’s worldbuilding was expanding.