What is Ancestry Project (The Animus)
This post details Ancestry Project (The Animus) that uses Google’s Gemini tools to create an interactive choose-your-own adventure that you can run as one of your own ancestors.
Part fiction, part genealogy, part emotional technology — Ancestry Project is metamodernism in code.
It was inspired by a machine from the game series Assassin’s Creed called The Animus that decodes memories in your DNA to provide an immersive virtual reality experience as one of your ancestors. In the game, you do this to solve present-day mysteries.
Github Link:
Empathy for the Past
The full saying goes: love your neighbor as you love yourself
Empathy is the balm for xenophobia, softening the fear of the stranger
Hiding in its shadow is oikophobia: the fear of one’s own.
When we see the past only in shadow, we inherit disconnection.
But to imagine our ancestors as extraordinary…
to see their humanity in both achievement and failure
is to begin the long work of reunion
Empathy does not excuse.
It listens. It remembers. It makes us kin again.
Love for the other and the self, balance restored.
Why This Matters Now
Postmodern thought taught us to question power
to see how history is written by the victors
how memory bends under the weight of empire, institution, and ideology
But when we use empathy to imagine our ancestors
not as symbols
but as people with dreams, flaws, and quiet resilience
we reclaim a kind of power too
Not the power to dominate
but the power to belong
To see ourselves in the past
and to resist the story that says we come from nothing worth remembering
In the ruins of grand narratives
we plant personal ones
This too is resistance
What is Ancestry Project (The Animus)
Part fiction, part genealogy, part emotional technology — Ancestry Project is metamodernism in code.
Technologies Used
Notes
My reason for doing this is developing empathy for the past. Trying to imagine living an ancestor’s life may help us feel less isolated from our past, and build connections in the present. There’s some research suggesting fiction can be a tool for developing empathy.
This project was completed for boot.dev hackathon 2025