Very vividly I remember the game of Happy Families as a childhood favourite of mine and my sisters'. We used to sit attentively swapping cards with determination to match up as many families as possible.

 

For those who are unaware, to aim of the game is to collect as many families as possible. In order to do this all of the cards are dealt as equally as possible between players and the purpose of the game is to swap cards until all 44 have been matched. The player with the most cards wins.

 

It is a game inspired by social structure of Victorian England, as was it's first introduction to the public at the Great Exhibition of 1851. It was one of the first card games to be a game for fun amongst children, as most of it's time were purely educational.

 

However as a secondary function the format of the pack of playing cards -lends itself to many secondary purposes, especially early learning: counting, sorting and hierachy within a family. In this case a pro-nucleur arrangement of 'Father, Mother, Son and Daughter'

 

This was the idea I wanted to question in terms of society today- in parcticular the the idea of an online society- the quirk being the impact of painting and image making.