The 5 Characteristics of Play

I've been searching for articles online and came across a book written in 1938 by a Dutch historian and cultural theorist, Johan Huizinga. In his book "Homo Ludens" (Man the Player) he defines five characteristics of play. Though this text is dated, I thought his points were interesting since I don't think we've come up with our own definition of play.

1. Play is free, is in fact freedom
2. Play is not "ordinary" or "real" life
3. Play is distinct from "ordinary" life both as to locality and duration
4. Play creates order, is order. Play demands order absolute and supreme.
5. Play is connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained from it

Something to think about...

P.S. see the wikipedia entry for more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Ludens

The best slice of internet, ever.

Hi all, just stumbled across this, whilst having nothing to do specifically with anything at all really, it's probably one of the most useful resources ever. There appears to be a few texts we have mentioned, plus hundreds more. You do have to register, but once that's done you have access to thousands of texts, entire books, essays and the opportunity to contribute too.

Enjoy!

http://a.aaaarg.org/

Art (?)

Meant to blog about this when I saw this a couple of weeks back. Anyways, here it is, the article from the Guardian (Dec 18, 2009):

Glass act: student fined for smashing gallery window and calling it art

What do you guys think? Can we think of this act as being what we might typically think of as 'art'? If it is art, in where does the aesthetic experience reside? What is 'art?'

Anyways. Happy TwentyTen, and hope that the new year has been good to all of you thus far!

Hop, Skip and Jump The Story of Children's Play.

Hi, I am unsure as to whether this will be of interest, but I just saw this briefly advertised on television. Perhaps something worth watching, though incredibly naive i'm sure.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00p8lhr

Susannah.

To surf:

http://www.architecturefoundation.org.uk/

http://www.e-flux.com/

http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/90

http://www.psychogeography.ca/index.htm

http://bidoun.com/index.php

http://www.barbican.org.uk/film/festivals.asp

http://www.barbican.org.uk/film/series.asp?id=629

Some exciting pieces to look at.

Our cause in context: reading on Situationism.

The Most Radical Gesture: The Situationist International in a Postmodern Age. S. Plant. (section '..a world of pleasures to win, and nothing to lost but boredom.'
Leaving the 20th Century The Incomplete Work of The Situationist International. C. Gray.
The Revolution of everyday Life. R. Vaneigem.

Also, the following website contains hundreds and hundreds of works that both, members of the group wrote and work that has been written about/around them/Situationism: http://library.nothingness.org