one part truth, two parts mixer

Playtime part 2

Repost from Run on Toast

My round-up of Playful continued from here, no faffing about - I'm just going to jump straight in.

Russell Davies mainly spoke about how we use pretending to make things more interesting (reminded me of a kid at school who used to go to the CIA/FBI websites and pretend that he was hacking into their mainframes). For example, the role of a watch:

And also how stuff that allows you to pretend has to be hidden in the detail (i.e. you can't pretend to be in an army vehicle driving a Hummer, because you are in an army vehicle - too bleeding obvious).
Most importantly, after his talk I desperately have to go here.

Molly Ränge talked about some really cool examples of Scandinavians playing, but crucially for me raised the question of how you 'evaluate' play, i.e. prove that it works. How do you make sure that when you put playful events into practice, that they aren't just limited to one-off events.

Duncan Gough: All I can say is that he made me think about what it would be like to play Friends (yes, the TV show). Slightly disturbing. Although, he also talked about what it would be like to play the Wire or Press Gang, which sound much more interesting ;).

Rex Crowle did his presentation on OHP:

The second analogue presentation in as many weeks (other one here)!
One of the interesting things he bought up the point that to help people play, we should give them the pre-defined bits to create a whole because that is less daunting. Also that a naïve animation style (like on Little Big Planet, which Rex worked on) encourages people to play.

These themes were revisited in Simon Oliver's talk: he gave the example of Spore, where the low level work of creating 'bits' is done for you, so you can get on and create a character. He also gave the example of South Park with the warning that slick visuals doesn't guarantee a good product.

The thing that made me happiest was hearing about TimWright's Kidmapper project. Basically when reading Robert Louis Stevenson's book Kidnapped (which follows the story of 'David Balfour running for his life across the Highlands, sometimes accompanied by tough and rebellious Alan, sometimes pursued by the English army'), he came across a passage which showed that the whole book happened between the dates of 30th June to 25th August. He basically decided to follow the trail, on foot, to see if the dates were right. What an awesome project!
I think he's organising a project where people meet up and follow a set trail from a book together, but I can't find anything on the interwebs (granted, I haven't looked that hard). He also wondered how nice it would be if books came with real maps of the areas covered inside, along with space for notes. The 'adventurer's version' if you like. I really like the idea of tying fiction to the real world. In fact visiting the spots from Bulgakov's Master and Margarita in Moscow ended up being a key to discovering a whole bunch of cool stuff.

Thanks to all the guys who organised it, looking forward to next year.

Playtime part 1

I was absolutely gutted to miss Playful last year (damn work!) but made up that pesky deadlines didn't get in the way this year. Roo Reynolds has written a good summary of the whole thing here, so I won't do that again, but in typical fashion list out my highlights, interesting bits and thought-starters from the day. So here goes:

Firstly there was a little plug for Wordr at the beginning of the day, which is like twitter but you can only use one word. Reminded me of the 1-track mixtape project that Martin and I never started, where you made MP3 mixtapes on floppy disks (3.44MB is generally enough for one lowish-quality tune).

Roo Reynolds started the day off with an interesting look at films of computer games and vice versa:

But it was a mostly excellent talk because it introduced me to this. The full talk is up on his site (here), it's well worth a listen.

A couple of things from Daniel Soltis (from Tinker.it):

• I liked the idea of a competitive picnic (basically go fish with picnic food) which was from a student project
• The joy that you get from physical gamepieces, the tactile experience, assigning them meaning
• The idea of trying to play a normal game with Guitar Hero/Rock band controller
• The Reverse Geocache Puzzle project by Mikal Hart, where a box is modded so it doesn't open until you reach certain co-ordinates. Read more here

 
The Reverse Geocache Puzzle Box (pic from here)

Lucy Wurstlin touched on a project by Mudlark to help people access data that's kept on them, for example from their oystercard, and play with it themselves. Also touched on a project to create an binaural game - Papa Sangre. Definitely have to investigate more into both of those. 

Robin Burkinshaw was interviewed by Matt Locke about the awesome Alice and Kev, and said one of my favourite quotes of the day: 'Interesting things happen because of the character's free will'. Free will? It's mad to think of video game characters as having free will, but did get me thinking about how video games are changing from a narrative determined by the game-maker to one defined by the gamer. The Sims may be the only game that truly does this now, but most games that exist within a world (such as Grand Theft Auto) allow the user to do their own thing to some extent. I wonder when gamers will be able to create their own story arc, or build their own missions that can be downloaded and played by their peers (it's very likely that this is already possible, I'm just not into those sort of games).

James Bridle's talk was just unbelievably awesome. He recreated MENACE (Matchbox Educable Noughts and Crosses Engine) which is/was an analogue machine that can learn how to play noughts and crosses (I think). I don't think I can really do any better than that so I'll leave you with another of my favourite quotes of the day ('Babbage was really into miracles') and some pictures (more here):


Tired now, going to have to make this a two-parter.

UPDATE 2/11: James has posted his slides and notes here, definitely worth a read.

They paved paradise

This looks a bit like it should be in Disneyland's "Crazy Town USA" or a Busta Rhymes video, but I like it because it brings an element of play to something mundane. Architects and town planners, please remember that revisiting the commonplace is a worth ambition. I want mental bus stops and car parks, and what the lady wants, surely she should get?



'Asphalt Spot' is an exhibtion space and car park near near Tokamashi in Japan, designed by R&Sie, and via the wonderful today and tomorrow

Tunnel of love

I haven't harped on about how public spaces need more elements of play in them for a while, but I haven't seen any good examples for a while. Really like this by artists Bar&Shay in Tel Aviv.

via Wooster Collective

Bridging the gap

Obviously loving this. Jan Vormann's Dispatchwork project using Lego to fill in holes in wall. As seen here in Berlin, but also in Bocchignano and Tel Aviv.

via Wooster Collective

Making lemonade

This is nice. When I was at school I remember someone plastering the whole building with post-its with random messages on. Reminds me of something Richard did where he wrote tweets on post-it notes and put them in physical places.

The eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed that the post-its direct you to here. Although I must say I don't agree with all the authors statements, for example 'choose comfort over style'. But I especially like these ones.
via Soon Lee via Dan

I dream of light

Found over on the always brilliant today and tomorrow, Tscherenkows Traum (Cerenkovs Dream) by Eno Henze. In Henze's words, a 'technological objet trouvé with 4 Led Panels, power adaptor and image processor'. What a magical backdrop this would make. I've been thinking a lot about creating magical spaces ever since I spoke to someone at Philips about the future of home entertainment (addressing smell and touch as well as sight, 360 projectors that make your whole room an extension of a TV screen, etc, etc). Why don't retailers plug into this more? When someone walks into your shop, why shouldn't their heart skip a beat?



His 'Ambushes' are pretty sick too, if on a totally different vibe.

Kaleidoscope!

One for the library of things I will use to inspire creative, or just outright steal.

Directed by Körner Union
via crackunit

Doodle earth

On Tuesday I was at a onedotzero adventures in motion shindig and came across the rather lovely Doodle Earth. I managed to Doodle my house in the wrong place and I wasn't even drunk. But anyway as you can see, lovely project.

The clever people that made it: Serge Seidlitz + Squint/Opera in association with debut art

Lightboxes

This is the Kubik nightclub in Berlin. The boxes light up in time with the music. Sweet.
Created by the clever German architects Modulorbeat. I love that their strapline is 'ambitious urbanists & planners'. Everyone should have ambitious as part of what they do.

via It's Nice That