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Tag Archives: games

“Personality goes a long way”

Ear­li­er this year Dutch artist Tin­ke­bell stood tri­al togeth­er with the direc­tor of a gallery for the alleged tor­tur­ing of ani­mals. She’d cre­at­ed an art­work involv­ing a lit­tle under a hun­dred ham­sters in so-called ham­ster­balls. Accord­ing to her it was a com­men­tary on the many peo­ple on YouTube post­ing video’s of their pets in these […]

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Drifting through the city with a few bocce balls

On a recent sun­ny Sun­day after­noon I took a walk while boulesing through Utrecht. Togeth­er with a group of friends I used a num­ber of streets and squares as a play­ing field. The water-lev­­el walk­ways along the Old Canal, the foun­tain behind the city hall, and the usu­al­ly qui­et Sev­en Alleys. Passers­by respond­ed with amusement […]

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Much obliged, +1 banana

The past two months we’ve been design­ing applied games for an hon­ors course called the Learn­ing Lab. The games are designed to offer a struc­ture in which things are learned through play and reflec­tion. That’s the idea, any­way. Anoth­er thing that sup­ports this reflec­tion is a por­tal where all stu­dents have a blog that is […]

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Slides and notes for ‘The City Is My Games Console’ at CIID

A few weeks ago I had the plea­sure of doing an open lec­ture at CIID; the Copen­hagen Insti­tute for Inter­ac­tion Design. Below you’ll find a selec­tion of the slides I used, plus a rough tran­script of what I said.1 Not includ­ed is arguably the most fun part of the after­noon, which was a playtest of […]

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Making cultural events more playful

These are sketch­es from a pre­sen­ta­tion that I deliv­ered a while back to a room full of orga­niz­ers of cul­tur­al events and cre­ative agen­cies from Utrecht. This was the cul­mi­na­tion of a study com­mis­sioned by the city of Utrecht, in which we looked at ways of adding play­ful ele­ments to the pro­grams of some of […]

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A few predictions for the future of urban games

On Wednes­day 14 April I co-host­ed the first Best Scene in Town work­shop on invi­ta­tion of Waag Soci­ety’s Ronald Lenz. The oth­er co-host was The Mobile City’s Mar­ti­jn de Waal. Best Scene in Town is a design con­test where­in par­tic­i­pants are asked to cre­ate an urban game, nar­ra­tive expe­ri­ence or tour using 7scenes; Waag Soci­ety’s […]

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Shaping the city with urban games at Visible Cities #03

Last week I had the plea­sure of being able to speak at Vis­i­ble Cities, which is a series of events on emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies and the city. The third edi­tion looked at urban gam­ing and brought togeth­er archi­tects, design­ers and tech­nol­o­gists to explore how these games can be used to shape cities. Michiel de Lange kicked […]

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Architects vs. Game Designers — Fight!

If you’re like me and con­sid­er the city to be a play­ground, then I’d love to have you join me in two weeks at the Waag for the first Best Scene in Town work­shop. The aim of this event is to explore the poten­tial of loca­­tion-based media in the city. We’re look­ing for par­tic­i­pants with […]

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Slides and notes for Transmutation at Raum Schiff Erde 2010

So I’ve returned from a short but won­der­ful trip to Ham­burg (too short, real­ly). Below you’ll find slides plus notes for the talk I gave at Raum Schiff Erde, a con­fer­ence put togeth­er by a group of Reboot adepts. I have to say, I thor­ough­ly enjoyed the laid-back atmos­phere, the curi­ous venue and the nice […]

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Kars Alfrink speaking at RaumschiffEr.de in Hamburg

On Feb­ru­ary 21 I’ll be speak­ing at RaumschiffEr.de in Ham­burg.1 It’s is a lit­tle broth­er of Reboot, a con­fer­ence in Copen­hagen I love for its relaxed atmos­phere, eclec­tic mix of peo­ple and slight­ly coun­ter­cul­tur­al lean­ings. RaumschiffEr.de aims to help design­ers and tech­nol­o­gists become more aware of the many net­works they rely on — peo­ple, technologies, […]

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