Hubbub has gone into hibernation.

Things we’re working on (volume 1)

On deck

So I decid­ed to make a lit­tle ‘what’s on deck’ area on the wall behind my desk today. These are all list­ed in my Things and stuff, but I like hav­ing things around me phys­i­cal­ly as a kind of ambi­ent reminder, also to all the oth­er folks in the studio.

And now I’m think­ing, why not do a quick post to share what’s going on with our friends out there. So here’s a list, with some short descrip­tions of the projects going on. Some have strange code­names, because they’re still kind of secret, oth­ers we can freely talk about and are out in the open.

  • PLAY Pilots (for­mer­ly known as Ebi) — a series of exper­i­men­tal live games for three cul­tur­al fes­ti­vals1 in the city of Utrecht. These three games are sup­port­ed with a web­site that includes an online game. Each live game is pro­duced in col­lab­o­ra­tion with a local cre­ative crew2. Next week the final game, Band­jes­land by Monoban­da, will launch at Le Guess Who?
  • Buta – an inves­ti­ga­tion into play between humans and domes­tic pig in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Design for Play­ful Impact (DPI) research pro­gram at the Utrecht School of the Arts (HKU). I’ve talked a bit about the back­ground for this project in this recent lec­ture.
  • Also in col­lab­o­ra­tion with DPI, we’re over­see­ing the pro­duc­tion of a game for the island of Pam­pus by a group of stu­dents at the HKU, and are plan­ning the design of a play­ful frame­work for all the fort’s exhibits to plug into (aka Ika).
  • We’re design­ing and pro­duc­ing a series of live games (and an online game) for the 2nd install­ment of the Learn­ing Lab (code­named Fugu). Learn­ing Lab is an exper­i­men­tal edu­ca­tion pro­gram for hon­ors stu­dents of the VU and the UvA. Our games are pri­mar­i­ly aimed at facil­i­tat­ing stu­den­t’s reflec­tion on their per­son­al devel­op­ment. Wieger and Syl­van (the Fugu team) have been blog­ging about their work exten­sive­ly, look for posts tagged Learn­ing Lab.
  • We’re co-curat­ing an exhi­bi­tion of inter­ac­tive work at Twee­t­akt 2011, a fes­ti­val for per­form­ing arts aimed at youth. We’ve put togeth­er a short­list and I must say it’s a love­ly col­lec­tion of local and inter­na­tion­al work that high­lights the role of per­for­mance in play­ful interaction.
  • Maguro — a hush-hush per­va­sive game for a large gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion that will be played by employ­ees, blend with their day-to-day work and hope­ful­ly ignite behav­ioral change. We should be sign­ing con­tracts for these soon, and then away we go.
  • And final­ly, Iwashi is the code­name for our involve­ment with a con­fer­ence for cre­ative folk work­ing with play and games planned for the sec­ond half of 2011.

What do you think? I don’t think that’s a bad list. I might do anoth­er one of these in anoth­er three months or so.

  1. Stekker Fest, Nether­lands Film Fes­ti­val, Le Guess Who? []
  2. Fource­Labs, Zes­baans, Monoban­da []
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