| Group B: 5m pres. Show your work in progress: What’s your main challenge? How are your practice and Research Journal tackling it? |
MAIN CHALLENGE/S: 1) Who is my audience? 2) How am I going to make a play object which invokes a sense of place? 3) When do I begin?
In terms of what is influencing my practice, I am currently casting a wide net. This accumulation of information/ inspiration is helping me to narrow down the finished concept for my practical MAI 170 project and helping me to “loosen up” with drawing, getting things physically made, trying new things before I settle into a format for my final project.
1. Reading/ Writing for the Critical Publication is informing my understanding of the connections between PLAY and a SENSE OF PLACE
– Concepts of play outside of the Western European scholar material:
* Mauri games and their connection to ancestry and place.
* The impact colonisation has had on a) the flexibility of play within learning environments (North America, Australia) & b) the current methodologies put into practice within global relief organisations
– Huizinga’s Magic Circle:
* The instinctive rules that apply when a person travels into a play-space.
* Considering how this place is a self-constructed liminal space, a permeable construct, which allows the potential for imagination and an effective method for connectivity.
– The Seriousness of Play:
* The scholarly consensus of the seriousness of play. Anthropogenic thinking discrediting the importance of play in our lives. Within the vernacular, play is usually regarded in two main ways: either as an activity solely for young people, or as a luxury for the privileged few. Neither of these statements are the inclusive truth of play – it predates humans and has unique qualities of changing the way we see. (“participants suggested that in framing the game as ‘art’ (rather than play) seemed to give adults an ‘alibi’ that seemed to deflect possible ‘embarrassment’ from acting in non-sanctioned ways adults normally act.” Luostarinen, 2021.)
* Avant-garde movements/ creatives utilising the subversiveness of play theory to dismantle societal constrictions.
2. Observation: Considering how people play
– Reflecting on play, by playing with young relatives and how they react during playtime. Observing young children with occasional work placement. Writing notes on these moments.
– The ways I could format a future local workshop/ focus group to answer more developed thoughts around how the intersection between play & place could benefit them.
– Formulating a questionnaire (currently, created with adults in mind) to open up different opinions on how we consider play: the wellness it provides, as well as the social parameters its definitions impose. Who else should I question?
3. Communicating with contemporary practitioners/ creatives
* Sara Hougham-Slade (Falmouth University PhD student, puppeteer, product developer)
Sara was very good to talk to for practice methodology. Her advice was to create a unique product for a unique target audience and that I am currently too vague with my “this project can be for anyone” mindset. But she did like my current consideration of visual over written language as my way to communicate with my project.
* Katrijn Oelbrandt (graphic designer)
Katrijn’s work for Z33’s ‘In The Eye of the Storm’ 2021 exhibition struck me as a really effective, iconographic method of allowing children to navigate an otherwise bewildering adult gallery space. Oelbrandt employed:
– the playing with interconnecting lines beyond the page
– recognisable shapes to cut out
– creating a playful physical space which matched the handheld components
– encouraging the audience to understand the exhibition by playing with the project
* Caroline Ross (natural paint maker)
Ross recommended to me some ways of procuring woad, which is a type of indigo dye grown all over the world but having a revival in Norfolk Broads where it was once in abundance. Experimenting with woad ink in my drawings could become a subtle way of connecting to a place I want to reflect upon.
4. Experimenting with my own responses to mythogeography and play through various mini projects, workshops etc. This is building my understanding of how I want to display my visual language for my practice outcome. Here are some bits for example:
