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Future Relics: Relicova — Artefacts of a Lost Civilisation
What if an ancient civilisation possessed technology far beyond our imagination?
Future Relics: Relicova is a speculative-design project exploring an imagined lost civilisation through a cohesive visual archive of futuristic artefacts, mechanical inventions, extraordinary creatures, impossible architecture, and sculptural couture.
Inspired by historical objects from The Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection and cinematic museum lighting created a consistent visual identity across the collection.
The project reimagines historical visual influences as objects from a civilisation that never existed, connecting archaeological aesthetics with speculative technology and contemporary design.
Explore the project
Recraft Project:
https://www.recraft.ai/project/0c0de38d-0753-4671-96bb-33c91b7083a1
Custom Recraft Style — Relicova:
https://www.recraft.ai/styles/83dc7816-2b0d-47a4-830f-72f81bbdf53d
Historical Archive References
The Metropolitan Museum of Art:
A forgotten past. An imagined future. A civilisation brought to life through design.
#ArchiveStyleChallenge #RecraftAI #RecraftStylesChallenge #SpeculativeDesign #ConceptArt #ArtDirection #FutureRelics
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Project Title: Surreal World 🌀✨
Description: Hey everyone! Here is my submission for the Recraft Challenge — a poster series called "Surreal World"! 🎨
For this project, I dove deep into the Public Domain Image Archive and gathered vintage 18th and 19th-century illustrations from various talented artists of that era — think old-school book engravings, scientific botanical plates, and classical etchings.
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I wanted to give these historical artworks a fresh, weird, and fun twist by mixing them with modern surrealism, bold colors, and psychedelic vibes. With Recraft, I blended classic cross-hatching textures and aged paper looks with funky symbols, neon contrasts, and dreamlike patterns.
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Hope you enjoy this little trip where history meets surreal imagination! Let me know what you think! 👇✨
i love these!
Can you believe that the inspiration behind these images comes from 2,000-year-old stone carvings? 🤯
For my #RecraftStylesChallenge, I wanted to explore how an ancient art style could tell a completely new story — the story of our world today and the future we’re creating.
My main inspiration was Birth of the Buddha Shakyamuni, an ancient Gandhara stone relief from around the 2nd century CE, now in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. What fascinated me was how artists carved detailed scenes into stone to preserve stories for generations. This particular panel was originally part of a larger series around a Buddhist stupa, illustrating episodes from the Buddha’s life.
Looking at this artwork made me wonder: what if the same traditional carving style was used to represent our world today?
That thought became the starting point of my project. Using Recraft, I reimagined modern life and futuristic ideas as intricate stone reliefs — from digital workspaces and smartphones to futuristic transportation, robotics, and space exploration.
One detail that mattered to me was making the entire scene feel sculpted, rather than simply adding a stone texture to a digital illustration. I wanted the figures, architecture, and technology to feel connected to the same carved surface, with deep relief, weathered textures, and carefully integrated colors.
I chose this style because of the contrast it creates. Ancient stone has a sense of permanence and history, while technology represents constant change and innovation. Bringing them together gave me a way to explore what happens when an art form from the distant past meets ideas that belong to our present and future.
What makes this project meaningful to me is the thought that our everyday lives might one day become history too. The devices we use, the cities we build, and the technology we create could all tell future generations something about who we were.
What if someone discovered these carvings thousands of years from now and used them to understand our world?
That’s the perspective I wanted to explore through this project — reimagining the present through the art of the past.
Historical Reference: The Met — Birth of the Buddha Shakyamuni
Gandhara region, Kushan period, circa 2nd century CE.
Stunning and clean
Specimens of the Future — a field guide to the machines of 2026, drawn in 1899
What if Ernst Haeckel had been handed our century to catalogue?
In the Biodiversity Heritage Library's scans of Kunstformen der Natur (1899) I found the most beautiful filing system ever made: jellyfish, radiolarians and hummingbirds arranged like jewels, every creature centred, symmetrical, and gravely serious. I trained a custom Recraft V4 Style — Machina Naturae — on eight of Haeckel's plates, and used it to catalogue the fauna that actually surrounds us now.
PLATE I · THE SMARTPHONE — the slab that glows back; its charging cable curls like a tentacle.
PLATE II · THE WIRELESS EARBUDS — twin grubs resting in their shell-case nest.
PLATE III · THE CAMERA DRONE — a four-winged insect with a single compound eye.
PLATE IV · THE ELECTRIC SCOOTER — a heron on one long leg, at rest between migrations.
PLATE V · THE VR HEADSET — a blind deep-sea creature, banded where its eyes should be.
PLATE VI · THE ROBOT VACUUM — a disc tortoise, grazing the savannah of the living-room floor.
PLATE VII · THE SMARTWATCH — the wrist-dweller, its dial a single watchful eye.
PLATE VIII · THE FOOD-DELIVERY BOX — a hermit species that carries its insulated home.
The brief: In the stacks of the Biodiversity Heritage Library I found Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur (1899) — plates that arranged jellyfish and radiolarians like jewels in a cabinet. I built one custom Recraft Style from eight of his plates and used it to catalogue the machines that now live alongside us: the smartphone, the drone, the robot vacuum. Each device is drawn as Haeckel drew his specimens — centred, symmetrical, gravely serious — as if a naturalist of 1899 had been handed the year 2026 to document. The result is a field guide to a fauna nobody ordered, but everybody owns.
Full series in the Recraft project: https://www.recraft.ai/project/bb94acd8-7b26-4c8c-9f19-00e7ec676a26
Try the Machina Naturae style: https://www.recraft.ai/styles/30cb7d33-a267-4687-bbbe-852998bcc5b5
Archive references (all public domain, Wikimedia Commons):
· Trachomedusae — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Haeckel_Trachomedusae.jpg
· Tetracoralla — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Haeckel_Tetracoralla.jpg
· Trochilidae — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Haeckel_Trochilidae.jpg
#recraftstyleschallenge
