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Tag Archives: play

A Free-to-Play World, our brief for IED students at the RCA

A while ago, we were invit­ed by John Fass to come up with a play-focused brief for stu­dents of the Infor­ma­tion Expe­ri­ence Design pro­gramme at the RCA. De-Com­pu­­ta­­tion is a theme run­ning through a lot of the work there, so we though it would be it would be inter­est­ing to ask the stu­dents to deconstruct […]

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Hack days as ludic practice

It was at DiGRA that I first heard Eric Zim­mer­man talk about the idea of this being a ludic age. We’re in the peri­od that fol­lows the infor­ma­tion age, which we’ve more or less left behind. In the ludic age, says Zim­mer­man, “infor­ma­tion itself is put at play”.1 What does that mean? It can’t just […]

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Occupy the future at Playful 2011

After mak­ing the many dif­fer­ent cre­ative indus­tries out there take games seri­ous­ly (and sub­se­quent­ly sort of regret­ting the con­se­quences) Play­ful was back this year and decid­ed to look towards the future. Ever since I pre­sent­ed there in 2008 this has prob­a­bly been my favorite event of the year. So I returned after a much-regret­t­ed hiatus […]

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The Transformers at dConstruct 2011

Over two weeks have passed since dCon­struct 2011 so it’s high time I post my talk. I felt a bit appre­hen­sive about this one: dCon­struct tends to have a pret­ty het­ero­ge­neous audi­ence, so it’s hard to know what kind of talk to shoot for. In addi­tion, I was slight­ly wor­ried about how peo­ple would react to […]

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Pools connected to playgrounds

I am pre­oc­cu­pied by the ways play and games con­nect to the phys­i­cal form of cities. Here’s one way to look at it: archi­tects are influ­enced by the sur­pris­ing new uses of exist­ing con­struc­tions. For exam­ple, there’s a con­nec­tion between a swim­ming pool like this one… Pho­to (cc) Mallix …and this play­ground designed by Carve for […]

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“New ideas must use old buildings”

The oth­er day I had din­ner at a radio-sta­­tion that was turned into a restau­rant. My favorite events venue in Ams­ter­dam used to be a print­ing press. And friends of mine are turn­ing a mas­sive sports hall into cre­ative work spaces. The uses build­ings were intend­ed for, and what they’re actu­al­ly used for, vary greatly. […]

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Speaking at dConstruct 2011

I am real­ly pleased to be speak­ing at dCon­struct this year. I’ve attend­ed the con­fer­ence myself sev­er­al times and always enjoy the well-curat­ed pro­gram and the good things offered by the even­t’s home, love­ly Brighton. You’ll find the abstract I sub­mit­ted below. Have a look at the con­fer­ence site for the rest of the program […]

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New Games for New Cities at FutureEverything

Last week I was in Man­ches­ter for FutureEv­ery­thing. I pre­sent­ed on games and how they can be used to improve city life. Below are my notes and a selec­tion of slides. It’s longish, but hope­ful­ly infor­ma­tive. I’ve tried to con­nect crit­i­cism of gam­i­fi­ca­tion with the virtues of open-end­ed play, and show how the lat­ter can […]

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Looking back on playful Tweetakt 2011

I’ve just uploaded a set of pho­tos tak­en at the open­ing of the play­ful Twee­t­akt 2011 exhi­bi­tion. As you may recall, I was asked to curate an inter­ac­tive addi­tion to this youth the­atre fes­ti­val. The works I select­ed are in my opin­ion all won­der­ful exam­ples of the way play can lead to per­for­mance. Each was […]

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“The opposite of play isn’t work…”

RANJ cre­at­ed a game that makes work in flower farm­ing green­hous­es more fun. The game plugs into the data being gath­ered there already, allow­ing work­ers to train their skills at spot­ting sick plants. In addi­tion, they attempt­ed to increase social inter­ac­tion between Dutch and Pol­ish work­ers by ask­ing them to col­lec­tive­ly answer a quiz or […]

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