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/

Schiller, Theory of Play and the Aesthetic

We’ve been discussing notions of play and the aesthetic, so I thought I’d post my understanding of Schiller’s theory of play, from his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man.

Under the play drive, the sensuous drive and the form drive are united.

The sensuous drive looks for our experience of time to be filled with content; we expose ourselves to determination by things. To be determinable is to be alive, to expose ourselves to the world.

Under the form drive, we form things; what we wish is to bring about figures, suspend time. We seek an end to change, it is a state of determination.

Play is a way of uniting change and identity. In play we remain exposed to impressions that come to us from the world, and think ourselves. Play is the aesthetic state, we must dwell in the aesthetic state to experience beauty; beauty is a figure that has come alive (form + sensuous), and we are only able to relate to it through play.

travel around the world (?)

not so much about travelling around the world, or otherwise, but that what is essentially the same set of actions/the same event is taking place in all these different locales/contexts... something that we may want to think about in terms of staging and documenting 'the play'. enjoy!

Visa Card World Currency TVC With Matt Harding

(and also see this wikipedia entry for some info on the guy in the blue tee: matt harding)

proposal of a starting point

After having read Steven Connor's text "playstations", and a bit about "psychogeographies", and after all these discussions that we have had, I was thinking that we would be legitimised to use a game as a transformative practice, but we would need to insert more levels of transformation. (Also it could be fun...) A game transforms its nature as it is played, when the players need or feel like setting new rules or reinvent some of them. Our theory can be applied here also in the sense that the game acquires its own autonomy(!!) as a process that depends only on the mood of its players at a given moment. I was thinking specifically of what happens in games like charades or "mime it down the alley" where the players have to act objects, concepts, film titles etc. Apart from the obvious transformation through acting, from my experience, these games can also transform the aesthetic images that we relate to the concepts/words /situations we are trying to act to each other. FOR EXAMPLE, when someone has to act "pride and prejudice" and you are in his team and you know the movie that his is trying to act, then you get a new perspective of how one could act it and if you have to act the same thing, in another game session for example, your aesthetic ideas of the film title will have been transformed and you will have incorporated parts or elements of his acting in yours now. Or, in "mime it down the alley", for example starting with freedom, the message/concept/movie title is acted through the line of players and usually takes other forms until it has been totally changed. If we filmed all the different stages where for example one's acting of freedom becomes the next one's acting of escaping and so on, then the explanation among the players of what they really acted, and if we filmed several game sessions and then edit all that in a good way, we can make a video of a game as a transformation of itself, of the concepts communicated and of the players' aesthetic images, and thus, acting manners for various concepts.

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.

fotan (hk)

hey everyone.

this is basically a fyi post on the above, since it was mentioned:

the main website appears to be down at the moment <www.fotanian.com>, so pls do head over to here for a pretty decent intro to the area: 'fotanian'. and this article too: 'fotanian open studios'. just an example of the 'conversion' of old factory spaces to working studio spaces.

cheers!

Shop at 34

A bit of feedback from yesterday. With Maria we went to see the opening of Shop at 34 and it seemed a really cool space to use in the future. It's on 2 floors and in a very nice zone in Holborn. We need to apply, as soon as we have a bit more of a concrete project we should start drafting a proposal.

This is their blog if you want to check it out

http://shopat34.blogspot.com/

see you tomorrow

Rachel's Reading Suggestions

This is Rachel's email from Friday, December 4, 2009:

Well for quick access and overview I would actually suggest going to the wikipedia entries (apologies to any purist art historians !) for Pyschogeography and the Derive which give a good overview and loads of links to texts and other sites and some of the maps etc.... Then you can follow as you see fit depending on time.

For further resesarch:

As Susannah suggested at google books – The most radical gesture: the Situationist International in a postmodern age By Sadie Plant – there are the first 27 pages which is a good introduction to the politics, philosophy, social context of the Situationists.

And then archives of SI texts and manifestos see:

www.notbored.org/SI-texts.html - Situationists Manifestos etc

http://library.nothingness.org/articles/4/en/display/2 - Debord on psychogeography

http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/display/314 - Debord on the derive


BUT – should we also perhaps think of discussing the ‘strategies of transformation’ or the transformative in Peter and Helge’s article in the read? Just an idea.

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.

Opening on Tuesday

Market Estate Project

Hi, I'm posting something again ...

This is another really interesting example of artists taking over an 'unusual' space. Perhaps quite a good case study because it is in formation now. I also love the fact that it is available to the public for one day before being demolished. Have a look ...

http://www.marketestateproject.com/

- Tom

AREA 10 - Peckham

Here's an idea for a field trip (shamefully cut and pasted from Facebook), it's actually the week after we break up from college (I got confused) but if anyone's still going to be around, I'll definitely be going down and perhaps you can join.

- Tom

Host:	Area 10 Project Space Peckham
Type:	Music/arts - Performance
Network:	Global

Date:	Thursday, 17 December 2009
Time:	19:00 - 23:00
Location:	AREA10 PROJECT SPACE PECKHAM SE15 5JT
Street:	Peckham Square, Peckham Hill Street
Town/City:	London, United Kingdom

BIOSPHERE Performance || Thursday night || 17th December ||
7pm PROMPT || ALL WELCOME || £4/£3 concessions

Cutting-edge performance collective LIVING STRUCTURES reveals their eagerly-awaited new event BIOSPHERE. Devised and manifest specifically with AREA10 during the past month - performed on the 17th December.

BIOSPHERE promises to be a challenging and involving piece of theatre. Living Structures is a collective of artists who believe that the position of the audience in their performances gives them a vital role to play in the telling of a story, and BIOSPHERE is no different. The audience will follow the characters through a mystical northern forest and will be able to wander amidst the trees encountering all manner of sights until they themselves eventually become part of the natural habitat.

“Moments of intense beauty and genuine wonder!” – Lyn Gardner, Theatre Critic for the Guardian

"Thrilling, exciting, provocative, sickening, challenging, wondrous..." - Terry O'Donovan, Total Theatre Magazine

“This was an exciting and innovative presentation, containing lots of creatively stimulating provocations, and operating in a crossover area between visual art installation and performance.”
James Hadley, Theatre Officer, Arts Council England, London


*******************************************************************

ABOUT AREA10:

AREA10 Project Space Peckham is an independent, unfunded artist led platform. Founded in 2002.

AREA 10 creates artist-led opportunities and activites that support and nurture artists making new work at critical junctures in their practice.

The focus of this enquiry rests on the importance of creating space and structures for artists to come together to share ideas and work. These take the form of events, exhibitions, performances, meetings, workshops, residencies, exchange and collaborations.

WWW.AREA10.INFO

Brixton Village - Interesting in terms of markets/networks/artist run spaces - also would be pretty exciting to utilise this free space if our ideas moved in that direction

What would you do with a space in a 1930s market arcade in Brixton? If you have a good idea, you could be part of the largest empty shops project in the UK.

Space Makers Agency is joining forces with London & Associated Properties PLC and Lambeth Council to fill the empty shop units in Brixton Village indoor market with exciting temporary and permanent projects.

Right now, 20 units in the market are being made ready for occupation. LAP are offering people the chance to take on a unit, rent free, for up to three months.

On Tuesday 10th November, the empty shops will be open for viewing from 4.30pm and anyone interested in taking on a space is invited to come to a meeting at 6.30pm. This will be a chance to hear from the owners and from Lambeth Council, as well as existing market traders, and find out what’s involved in taking on a shop – on a temporary or permanent basis.

Space Makers is looking for your ideas for creative, community-oriented and enterprising projects to make use of a space. Projects could include new and existing businesses, as well as community groups, arts and theatre projects and other imaginative uses of space.

...?

Hi all, have listed a few texts that could be useful regarding reading up on Situationism. Just to confirm that for next week we need to have our proposals on the blog. This should be a lot more straight forward than the other. Just to let you know am deleting the Tumblr blog and will transfer Tom's post on Brixton Village.

Susannah.

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

LABELS

Personal Proposals

Bibliography: Journals, Texts, Books, Online Resources

Field Trips / Feedback

Archive

Calendar

Lab Group Discussion

Misc.