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Streets as Playgrounds

Next week Sophie is back in Japan for the second part of the Playable City Residency.

The Playable City programme has been leading investigations of how to deepen people’s engagement with their cities since 2012. Artists in the programme have developed many novel ways of interacting with the city: giving street furniture a voice, showing people traces of the others who have crossed their paths, giving people a framework to interact with strangers and the night sky.

I wanted to pull some focus onto the city itself, and interrogate the effect particular places have on play. Use action research to explore how people respond in different surroundings, and which invitations people respond to most strongly, as part of building a practical methodology for siting playful installations. So I’m using one of the simplest and most universal childhood games KenKenPa (a hopscotch analogue), to test some things out with the citizens of Tokyo.

Relaxing into deep play requires being comfortable enough to be vulnerable. It helps to be with other people who can re-inforce your decision to play. It requires people to be in a space they feel is for them in some way. Observing them make those decisions in real time, on the streets, reveals so much about how they feel in different spaces.

Taking play out onto the open streets has benefits for the overall life of the city. It draws people together, changes the ballet of street life in positive ways, and serves those who would not decide to travel somewhere just to play.

I’m looking forward to trying things out on the street and getting some results.

Exhibiting Difficult Games

I think a lot of games curators will have spent today thinking about this post by Nathalie Lawhead, in which Lawhead recounts a recent experience of showing her game Everything is going to be OK at an event. The experience as she tells it has positive elements but was overall pretty stressful, with a lot of moments where players performed youtube-style “what is this WEIRD GAME” baffled screaming. Her experience was clearly not the best; Lawhead’s game is in some ways inaccessible and it rejects many of the conventions that make games easy to grasp in a crowded expo or exhibition environment. She writes:

I feel like, if you show games like this to total consumers audience, you have to prepare the audience for it. The setting and context has to be differentiated. You HAVE to create a space that basically screams “THESE ARE ART DON’T EXPECT A TRADITIONAL GAME”. You have to make some kind of point that people have to be open minded. Create a space that encourages respect.

August physical play roundup

It’s August! As always there’s some open calls and conferences and games going on, but there’s also a lot of interesting writing around this month.

Open Calls

WordPlay is back in Toronto and has an open call out for games and talks relating to the use of words in contemporary games. Games that are accepted for the showcase receive an artist fee of $80.

And Game on! El arte en juego, in Buenos Aires, also has a call out for an event to take place in December. The google form to submit a game is here. (No artist fee or travel support currently available, but past iterations of the event have obviously been great). They’re keen on experimental games, interactive playful objects, strange controllers and all sorts.