PLAY STUDIO 2009
Assignment for Synthesis Studios (Week 17):
Working individually, identify a site that you wish to explore for its potential for triggering play. From this context you will define a theme that will engage people in playing. This theme will be then developed in two directions:
1. On Monday 20 April:
You will present a way to engage in play by using performance + space. Audience or participants? Space or place? You decide, but be prepared to justify your decisions.
2. On Wednesday 22:
You will present the same theme, but this time the emphasis will be placed on the artefact – i.e. the materials that mediate that engagement. Incorporate also the feedback you received from the Monday (20 April) seminar to refine further your design for triggering play, now involoving site, agency and materials/media.
Deliverables:
Monday (20/4), a film, play or performance that enacts the play(ing).
Wednesday (22/4), a scenario that incorporates a 2D-3D model of the design that triggers play(ing).
Reading
See handout.
Wednesday, 8 April 2009
Reinventing Innovation
By ALICE RAWSTHORN
Published: April 5, 2009
LONDON — Some words just wear themselves out. They are used — or misused — so often that they lose their meaning. “Design” is one, “creative” is another, and if I see “contemporary” used to describe one more stick of furniture that looks as if it has been sequestrated from a 1980s porn palace, I will scream.
gDiapers
When the gDiaper, which consists of a biodegradable insert worn inside a pair of underpants, is soiled, you can flush it down the toilet. If it is only wet, you can compost it and it will decompose within a few months.
A recent recruit to the endangered list is “innovation.” Once hailed as a panacea, it has been so diminished by hyperbole that it risks seeming irrelevant. (“Transformation” is the fashionable favorite to replace it.) Yet just like “design” and “contemporary,” “innovation” is losing credibility as a word at the very time when it is needed most urgently.
As the economic and environmental crises deepen, there is a growing recognition that many aspects of our lives need to be reinvented. Politicians routinely call for the “redesign” of society, and urge businesses to “innovate” their way out of recession. This readiness to embrace change — even radical change — coupled with advances in science and technology, is unleashing a stream of innovations. Here are some of the most exciting ones.
More.
Published: April 5, 2009
LONDON — Some words just wear themselves out. They are used — or misused — so often that they lose their meaning. “Design” is one, “creative” is another, and if I see “contemporary” used to describe one more stick of furniture that looks as if it has been sequestrated from a 1980s porn palace, I will scream.
gDiapers
When the gDiaper, which consists of a biodegradable insert worn inside a pair of underpants, is soiled, you can flush it down the toilet. If it is only wet, you can compost it and it will decompose within a few months.
A recent recruit to the endangered list is “innovation.” Once hailed as a panacea, it has been so diminished by hyperbole that it risks seeming irrelevant. (“Transformation” is the fashionable favorite to replace it.) Yet just like “design” and “contemporary,” “innovation” is losing credibility as a word at the very time when it is needed most urgently.
As the economic and environmental crises deepen, there is a growing recognition that many aspects of our lives need to be reinvented. Politicians routinely call for the “redesign” of society, and urge businesses to “innovate” their way out of recession. This readiness to embrace change — even radical change — coupled with advances in science and technology, is unleashing a stream of innovations. Here are some of the most exciting ones.
More.
Mapping the Cultural Buzz: How Cool Is That?
By MELENA RYZIK
Published in NYT: April 6, 2009
Apologies to residents of the Lower East Side; Williamsburg, Brooklyn; and other hipster-centric neighborhoods. You are not as cool as you think, at least according to a new study that seeks to measure what it calls “the geography of buzz.”
The research, presented in late March at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, locates hot spots based on the frequency and draw of cultural happenings: film and television screenings, concerts, fashion shows, gallery and theater openings. The buzziest areas in New York, it finds, are around Lincoln and Rockefeller Centers, and down Broadway from Times Square into SoHo. In Los Angeles the cool stuff happens in Beverly Hills and Hollywood, along the Sunset Strip, not in trendy Silver Lake or Echo Park.
More.
Published in NYT: April 6, 2009
Apologies to residents of the Lower East Side; Williamsburg, Brooklyn; and other hipster-centric neighborhoods. You are not as cool as you think, at least according to a new study that seeks to measure what it calls “the geography of buzz.”
The research, presented in late March at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, locates hot spots based on the frequency and draw of cultural happenings: film and television screenings, concerts, fashion shows, gallery and theater openings. The buzziest areas in New York, it finds, are around Lincoln and Rockefeller Centers, and down Broadway from Times Square into SoHo. In Los Angeles the cool stuff happens in Beverly Hills and Hollywood, along the Sunset Strip, not in trendy Silver Lake or Echo Park.
More.
Call for Articles
JOURNAL CONTRIBUTION
Call for Articles: Special Thematic Issue of the SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNAL OF ART HISTORY. The third 2009 issue of the South African Journal of Art History will be a special thematic issue dealing with the theme ART / ARCHITECTURE / MUSIC (in any combination). The purpose is to focus on the integration, interdependence andmutual enhancement of these arts. Closing date for the receipt of articles: 31 August 2009. Send articles by e-mail (not exceeding 10MB) to the editor: Estelle A. Maré, If the article exceeds 10MB send two hard copies to the following postal address: Prof EA Maré, 431 Farenden Street, Clydesdale, Pretoria 0002, South Africa
Call for Articles: Special Thematic Issue of the SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNAL OF ART HISTORY. The third 2009 issue of the South African Journal of Art History will be a special thematic issue dealing with the theme ART / ARCHITECTURE / MUSIC (in any combination). The purpose is to focus on the integration, interdependence andmutual enhancement of these arts. Closing date for the receipt of articles: 31 August 2009. Send articles by e-mail (not exceeding 10MB) to the editor: Estelle A. Maré,
SENSEWALKING: SENSORY WALKING METHODS FOR SOCIAL SCIENTISTS
RGS-IBG Annual Conference SENSEWALKING: SENSORY WALKING METHODS FOR SOCIAL SCIENTISTS in Manchester, 26-28 August 2009. Convenors: Mags Adams (University of Salford) and Kye Askins (Northumbria University). In recent years there has been a growing interest in the role of non-visual senses in the relationships between people and places, in particular how 'sense of place' involves complex corporeal encounters with our environments - how we 'sense' place in terms of sound, smell, touch, taste (alongside sight) as well as understand it through social constructions and circulated texts (Wylie, 2005; Butler, 2006; Edensor, 2006; Pink, 2007). Researchers from across disciplines have worked with the 'sensory walking' concept, utilising sensewalks, soundwalks, listening walks and smell walks as a means to involve participants in discussion, interview, photo-survey, GIS mapping and sound recording, among other innovations/ adaptations. While a recent ESRC seminar series addressed 'Sensescapes' more broadly there has not been a concerted effort to bring together researchers working with beyond-the-visual senses as method. This session seeks to rectify such a gap and welcomes papers from geographers, sociologists, artists, anthropologists, planners, landscape architects and designers (amongst others), acknowledging the multi-disciplinary nature of much of the work in this area. More information:
Monday, 6 April 2009
Robert Morris's Bodyspacemotionthings
The Guardian’s reporter noted: 'Some of the 1,500 visitors became so intoxicated by [the] opportunities that they went around 'jumping and screaming' to quote the exhibitions keeper, Mr Michael Compton. They went berserk on the giant see-saws, and they loosened the boards on other exhibits by trampling on them. ... 'It was just a case of exceptionally exuberant or energetic participation,' Mr Compton said tolerantly'
View.
View.
Tate Modern's Turbine Hall recreates a 1971 art sensation
Bodyspacemotionthings allows audience to crawl, clamber, balance and slide
by Charlotte Higgins, chief arts writer
The Guardian, Monday 6 April 2009
It was May 1971, and the opening of an exhibition at the Tate Gallery in London; the sort of thing that one might expect to be quiet, dignified and staid - but, as it turned out, all hell broke loose.
Men started picking up some of the exhibits - weights suspended on chains - and swinging them around their heads. First aiders were occupied picking splinters out of the rear ends of the miniskirted young women hurt on wooden slides.
"The trouble is they went bloody mad," the Daily Telegraph quoted a guard as saying of the visitors as he surveyed the battered remains of the installation.
The Guardian said at the time: "The participation seems likely to wreck the exhibits and do the participants a mischief."
After four days, the show - now more or less wrecked and the cause of a number of injuries - was abruptly closed. But this spring, the infamous exhibition is to be recreated at London's Tate Modern with, it is hoped, rather less mass hysteria.
More.
by Charlotte Higgins, chief arts writer
The Guardian, Monday 6 April 2009
It was May 1971, and the opening of an exhibition at the Tate Gallery in London; the sort of thing that one might expect to be quiet, dignified and staid - but, as it turned out, all hell broke loose.
Men started picking up some of the exhibits - weights suspended on chains - and swinging them around their heads. First aiders were occupied picking splinters out of the rear ends of the miniskirted young women hurt on wooden slides.
"The trouble is they went bloody mad," the Daily Telegraph quoted a guard as saying of the visitors as he surveyed the battered remains of the installation.
The Guardian said at the time: "The participation seems likely to wreck the exhibits and do the participants a mischief."
After four days, the show - now more or less wrecked and the cause of a number of injuries - was abruptly closed. But this spring, the infamous exhibition is to be recreated at London's Tate Modern with, it is hoped, rather less mass hysteria.
More.
Sunday, 5 April 2009
Scott Brown on Dark Superheroes and Childish Action Figures
...Deeply damaged characters in figurine form deny youngsters those first tender forays into cruelty—that compulsive subconscious release so critical to the concept of "play"—by arriving already effed-up. Children are adept at defacing, even deconstructing, the fantasies McPackaged for them. Adults, on the other hand, need help....
More in Wired.
More in Wired.
The power of play
by Pat Kane
Pat Kane argues that workers in post-industrial societies are moving away from the work ethic, towards more playful, but also potentially more caring, forms of activity.
Read.
Pat Kane argues that workers in post-industrial societies are moving away from the work ethic, towards more playful, but also potentially more caring, forms of activity.
Read.
The Secret Life of Puppets/Living Dolls
(HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS, £20.50, 350PP)(FABER & FABER, £12.99, 278PP)
The Secret Life of Puppets, by Victoria Nelson
Living Dolls, by Gaby Wood
From robot dolls to cyborgs, humans have dreamt of artificial intelligence. Pat Kane says that this urge has more to do with metaphysics than mechanics
Review by Pat Kane.
As enduring quotations go, this one seems to be girding its loins for a very long life. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," Arthur C Clarke wrote in his 1972 science-fiction story "Report on Planet Three". Gaby Wood's Living Dolls uses it at the fulcrum of her exhaustive – and slightly exhausting – collection of mini-histories about our fascination with robots. I have always thought there was a missing end to the Clarke quote, though: it seems like magic only if you're performing it to credulous, untechnical fools.
Read.
The Secret Life of Puppets, by Victoria Nelson
Living Dolls, by Gaby Wood
From robot dolls to cyborgs, humans have dreamt of artificial intelligence. Pat Kane says that this urge has more to do with metaphysics than mechanics
Review by Pat Kane.
As enduring quotations go, this one seems to be girding its loins for a very long life. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," Arthur C Clarke wrote in his 1972 science-fiction story "Report on Planet Three". Gaby Wood's Living Dolls uses it at the fulcrum of her exhaustive – and slightly exhausting – collection of mini-histories about our fascination with robots. I have always thought there was a missing end to the Clarke quote, though: it seems like magic only if you're performing it to credulous, untechnical fools.
Read.
Dialoguing Play
Pat Kane In discussion with Steve Linstead and Rob McMurray. With additional questions by Andy McColl, Sebastian Bos and Ed Wray-Bliss.
In 2004, Pat Kane published The Play Ethic: A Manifesto for a Different Way of Living (Macmillan), which went into mass-market paperback in September 2005. Pat’s commitment to bridging boundaries between the arts, sciences and social sciences to open up new possibilities for working, living and creating futures together struck a chord with the Department of Management Studies at the University of York, who appointed him Visiting Fellow in 2005. To inaugurate the appointment, on October 5th 2005 Pat presented a 90 minute overview of the ideas in the book, followed by a 90 minute seminar discussion. The questions and responses taken from the discussion were edited, reworked and updated by Pat (in between writing and recording a new Hue and Cry album) and the resulting text is presented here.
In 2004, Pat Kane published The Play Ethic: A Manifesto for a Different Way of Living (Macmillan), which went into mass-market paperback in September 2005. Pat’s commitment to bridging boundaries between the arts, sciences and social sciences to open up new possibilities for working, living and creating futures together struck a chord with the Department of Management Studies at the University of York, who appointed him Visiting Fellow in 2005. To inaugurate the appointment, on October 5th 2005 Pat presented a 90 minute overview of the ideas in the book, followed by a 90 minute seminar discussion. The questions and responses taken from the discussion were edited, reworked and updated by Pat (in between writing and recording a new Hue and Cry album) and the resulting text is presented here.
Toy story
Jon Henley
The Guardian, Thursday 26 March 2009
Never mind the recession - Lego is now so popular that there are 62 little coloured blocks for every person on the planet. Yet only five years ago this family business was on the brink of ruin. Jon Henley reports from the Danish town where it all began.
Read on.
The Guardian, Thursday 26 March 2009
Never mind the recession - Lego is now so popular that there are 62 little coloured blocks for every person on the planet. Yet only five years ago this family business was on the brink of ruin. Jon Henley reports from the Danish town where it all began.
Read on.
The Play Ethic
What is 'The Play Ethic'?
... It's an idea, a meme, a concept
The Play Ethic first came to me as a phrase in the early nineties, in the midst of a rehearsal with my neo-jazz band, in a moment when our drummer re-described his own 'work ethic'. (A few minutes' activity with AltaVista - an early search engine - would confirm that the phrase was hardly original). But as soon as I heard it, I realised that it had enough capacity in it to serve as a headline bringing together a wide range of interests of mine - cultural, technological and political.
Certainly as the Nineties progressed, the idea that computers and networks were making our societies more open, our institutions more transparent, and our civic and creative voices more prominent, began to increasingly excite me. Guided by magazines like Wired and Mondo 2000, and academics like Manuel Castells, I began to explore the nascent Web – exulting both in the diversity of the voices on there, and the increasing possibilities for self-expression.
My 80's experience as a musician, using digital technolgies like samplers and synths, had gotten me used to the idea of information as infinitely malleable, produceable and "playable-with". With the Net, these informational powers promised to spread beyond the artist's enclave, into workplaces, schools and the home.
But how did the heady mass empowerment of the Net sit with the constraints, hierarchies and routines of most life within organisations? Not well, it seemed to me (I had spent a lot of the Nineties in broadcast and press environments, chafing against such limits). The sociologist Daniel Bell has often talked about the "cultural contradictions of capitalism": where industry demands both a docile producer, and a hedonistic consumer, and is perplexed when the desirousness of the second identity saps the duteousness of the first.
More.
... It's an idea, a meme, a concept
The Play Ethic first came to me as a phrase in the early nineties, in the midst of a rehearsal with my neo-jazz band, in a moment when our drummer re-described his own 'work ethic'. (A few minutes' activity with AltaVista - an early search engine - would confirm that the phrase was hardly original). But as soon as I heard it, I realised that it had enough capacity in it to serve as a headline bringing together a wide range of interests of mine - cultural, technological and political.
Certainly as the Nineties progressed, the idea that computers and networks were making our societies more open, our institutions more transparent, and our civic and creative voices more prominent, began to increasingly excite me. Guided by magazines like Wired and Mondo 2000, and academics like Manuel Castells, I began to explore the nascent Web – exulting both in the diversity of the voices on there, and the increasing possibilities for self-expression.
My 80's experience as a musician, using digital technolgies like samplers and synths, had gotten me used to the idea of information as infinitely malleable, produceable and "playable-with". With the Net, these informational powers promised to spread beyond the artist's enclave, into workplaces, schools and the home.
But how did the heady mass empowerment of the Net sit with the constraints, hierarchies and routines of most life within organisations? Not well, it seemed to me (I had spent a lot of the Nineties in broadcast and press environments, chafing against such limits). The sociologist Daniel Bell has often talked about the "cultural contradictions of capitalism": where industry demands both a docile producer, and a hedonistic consumer, and is perplexed when the desirousness of the second identity saps the duteousness of the first.
More.
Saturday, 4 April 2009
Art of Foley
Many thanks to Ulf Olausson for a fascinating and generous tour of his foley studio and working methods. For those interested in reading further about the art of foley, there is a useful tutorial here.
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