| D O O R S O F P E R C E P T I O N 5 | |
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| Cultural Playing Fields |  |
| PDF link for printable transcription | Michiel Schwarz |
Introduction From the moment that John Thackara and I put the word 'play' on the table, we began to realise it wasn't really just about play as an activity, or about the things we play with, but more about how the idea of play raises a whole range of cultural questions concerning the way we are experiencing and designing the world around us. To put it differently, 'play' thus became an entry point. Or in different words again, a became a 'lens' through which we could look at our 'technological culture' - as I have called it - and raise some issues about that from different viewpoints. Play is not just part of culture. Play is older than culture; at least that's what the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga said exactly sixty years ago, in his seminal work "Homo Ludens", or "man as player", which was also quoted by Simon Vinkenoog. Play has always been present, in our imaginations as well as in our experiences, in our toys and in our tools. But now, at the end of the 20th century, it is an appropriate time to ask: what does it mean to play? what do we play? how do we play? and with whom do we play? To explore, between now and lunch time, some of these underlying questions - having put on the glasses, the lens of play - we have, four presenters. Each in their own way, will show us how ideas of play, and play experiences and sensibilities can take on different forms; and how that in turn relates to different designs and different design approaches. The first presentation will be Eric Zimmerman, who will take us through one particular type of play, namely games, and show us what its essential qualities are. Eric Zimmerman is co-founder of Flat, a New York based game developer who has worked in paricular on multiplayer e-mailgames, and is now about to launch his first board game. The second speaker is David Vogler, now creative director of Nickelodeon Online, previously responsible for kids content at Disney Online. He will show us both real and digital toys. He will give us sort of a run through different play media, from toys to television spots, to digital entertainment. He will give us a sense of where play may be going, at this particular time, when the borderlines between digital and non-digital designs are beginning to converge and blur. After that, Jogi Panghaal and Ranjit Makkuni will give us a very different perspective on the cultural power of play. Jogi Panghaal who's an Indian product designer, working on community design products - and a popular speaker at Doors - will explore the cultural significance of play in relation to design. With a visual journey of play and crafts in India, he will position play right at the heart of the design process itself, and link it to issues of learning, creativity, and the body. This idea will be taken one step further by Ranjit Makkuni, who's a musician and a multi-media designer, working both with Xerox Parc research center in California, and the Indira Ghandi Centre for the Arts in New Delhi. He will look at different mythologies of play. Using examples from multi-media design he will contrast different experiences, focusing on the interaction between tools of play and the body. After his presentation we will shift for a moment from the talking about play to 'Live' play. Ranjit Makkuni will be playing the sitar for us, accompanied by the tabla-player Visnu Mishra - as a sort of final epilogue to this morning's session. So let us now venture into the cultural playing fields... |
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url: DOORS OF PERCEPTION |
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