RMIT DESIGN HUB DES & I Y G N A & L P DES & I Y G N A & L PROJECT ROOMS 1, 2 & 3 P 29 APRIL – 14 MAY 2016 DESIGN & PLAY » INTRODUCTION The Power of Play diverse range includes works by artists Emily Floyd, Michael Georgetti, Ronnie van Hout, Rohit As a space dedicated to exhibiting design ideas Khot, Laresa Kosloff, Arlo Mountford, Kate and research projects in progress, the notion Rohde, Nick Selenitsch, Fleur Summers, of playful experimentation is key to Design TextaQueen, Chad Toprak and Amani Naseem, Hub’s overarching remit. With programmable Paul Wood and Erwin Wurm. zones spread throughout the building, Design Hub operates less like a traditional gallery and Through these playful and ideas-led more with the intensity of a studio environment. explorations Design & Play reflects upon the As such, the curatorial intent at Design Hub socio-political implications of play within focuses on design’s exploratory processes in contemporary culture and, in doing so, reveals order to mediate to audiences the power of something new to audiences about the power progressive design ideas to positively shape of play within progressive design practice. our future. Fleur Watson An exhibition exploring the intersection of Curator design and play then, resonates strongly with RMIT Design Hub this remit. Design & Play is a multi-authored, — co-curated, trans-disciplinary exhibition produced in collaboration with key researchers and practitioners drawn from the School of Media and Communications. Through ‘live’ research projects in development, interactive installations and reflective artworks, Design & Play explores play as a creative, social, cultural and political act. Importantly, Design & Play brings together design practitioners working at the forefront of animation gaming and digital media. As the exhibition’s co-curators state: “To understand play is to understand contemporary digital media.” Instead of focusing on the pragmatics of the technology itself or, conversely, presenting a fantastical future, the projects exhibited here are grounded in current ‘in- development’ research and experimentation. Project Room 1 is transformed by a full-scale fulldome – DomeLab – the first ultra-high resolution one of its kind in Australia. DomeLab brings together people of all ages to play games within a highly experiential environment and, concurrently, exposes them to a ‘live lab’ where researchers explore the creative process of content production in real time. Alongside DomeLab, audiences can experience Out of Space – a research project that makes use of the most recent virtual reality gaming technology. Moving through Project Rooms 2 and 3, visitors encounter a series of culturally responsive works curated by Larissa Hjorth and Lisa Byrne that encourage activation in order to reflect upon and respond to ideas of play. The DESIGN & PLAY » INTRODUCTION DESIGN & PLAY » INTRODUCTION Design & Play alternative methods and pathways can artists situate a series of physical games in and 1. Flanagan, M. (2009) Critical Play. Cambridge, and designers working across and through the around the Design Hub. Fleur Summers marries Mass: MIT Press. Larissa Hjorth and Lisa Byrne disciplines provide? ping-pong games with static library desks, 2. Sutton-Smith, B. (1997) The Ambiguity of — challenging the audience to invent their own Play. London: Routledge. Let the games begin… version of a conventional game, whilst Ronnie van Hout plays with toys and the art artefact 3. Sicart, M. (2014) Play Matters. Cambridge, Design & Play probes the interdisciplinary and Ambient and soft play to destablise the expectation of how these are Mass: MIT Press. poetic role of play within the everyday through Play can be deployed as a site of resistance, conventionally displayed within the white cube. the eyes of designers and artists. Design & 4. Scholz, T. (ed) (2012) Digital Labour. New but it can also, through its ‘softness’, create a Play takes its cue from interdisciplinary Arlo Mountford and Nick Selenitsch utilise York: Routledge. space to escape the logic of neo-Liberalism. communities and debates around the movement sensors to track and comment on the This phenomenon requires us to re-examine understanding of play as a creative, social, audiences’ motions. This is extended in 5. Kücklich, J. (2005) Precarious Playbour: definitions of play, especially in the face of cultural and political concept and mode of Selenitsch’s take on office basketballMore Modders and the Digital Games Industry, gamification, big data and the quantified self. practice. As the artist, designer and theorist Rebounds, which invites participants to scrunch Fibreculture, http://five.fibreculturejournal. As noted by Professor Larissa Hjorth and Professor Mary Flanagan has noted, history is up paper balls and throw them at an impossible org/fcj-025-precarious-playbour-modders- Associate Professor Ingrid Richardson, full of artists deploying various modes of target. Emily Floyd presents three mixed media and-the-digital-games-industry/ “ambient play contextualises the game within critical play to undermine conventions.1 works drawing on the social and historical broader processes of sociality and embodied 6. Deterding, S., D. Dixon, R. Khlaed and L. — referencing of play, TextaQueen is “mindful” well media practices, and is essential to the Nacke (2011) From game design elements to ahead of the current colouring book phase, and corporeality of play whereby play in, and gamefulness: Defining “gamification”. Laresa Kosloff evokes the suggestive nature of outside, the game space reflects broader Proceedings of the 15th Inter. Academic Playing with labour play within her performative street video works cultural nuances and phenomena”.8 Mindtrek Conference, pp. 9-15. To understand play is to understand calling bystanders to action (Let’s do something Mangalindan, JP. (2010) Play to win: the contemporary digital media. Play is also culturally Ambience is often used to describe sound and in Italian) alongside performers dramatising the game-based economy. Forbes, 3rd September. and socially specific.2 For games scholar music but has also been used in computing and phrase I can’t do anything on the streets of Associate Professor Miguel Sicart, contemporary science. As a noun, it specifically refers to a Prato, Italy. Paul Wood and Michael Georgetti 7. See Flanagan (2009) and Sicart (2014). 3 get playful with sculptures made from everyday media is inherently playful. In this playfulness, style of music with electronic textures and no 8. Hjorth, L. and I. Richardson (2014) Gaming in objects, playing with our expectation of what a debates about its exploitative and empowering consistent beat that is used to create a mood Social, Locative and Mobile Media. London: sculptural form might look like. Referencing elements ensue. As media theorist and artist or feeling, but more generally the term describes Palgrave, p. 60. Associate Professor Trebor Scholz observes, the diffuse atmosphere of a place. In short, classical sculptures, these works are made from digital labour is riddled with paradoxes whereby ambience is about the texture of context, found, and at times, kitsch items that are very 9. McCullough, M. (2013) Ambient Commons. the Internet can be understood as both a emotion, and affect. For architecture theorist familiar to us through contemporary culture. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. playground and a factory.4 Games scholar Julian and urban planner Professor Malcolm Finally, Kate Rohde takes the playful into the Kücklich coined the term ‘playbour’ to define the McCullough, the rise of ubiquitous media in and wonder of aesthetics. around the city has resulted in the need for us various player labour practices emerging, such As curators we invite audiences to enact playful to rediscover our surroundings.9 He argues that as the modification of games (known as interactions, interventions and reflections. As 5 understanding attention as ambient can lead to modding). As Kücklich notes, players invest much Sicart’s accompanying provocation suggests, new types of shared cultural resources and social, creative and cultural capital into modding, we also call on audiences to collaborate in the social curation akin to a type of common that which is then transformed into financial capital variety of activities, workshops and moves in and out of the digital and the everyday. by games companies. In short, players are doing interventions over the period of the exhibition — some of the labour for companies that, in turn, to further our understanding of play as companies capitalise upon. This ambiguity around something that is integral to what makes us play and labour is increasingly amplified by Play On human, creative and social. gamification – the use of gameplay or game design in non-game fields such as marketing – a Design & Play seeks to provide a constellation process that is still in its infancy.6 where audiences can reflect upon and play through different modulations of playful The conversations between the critiques of interventions in the Design Hub Project Spaces. labour and the creativity of playful media have Artists such as Erwin Wurm tease the audience been divisive, with researchers often arguing to partake in a series of playful performances. for the subversion of play to mitigate the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) artist Rohit exploitation of users and players.7 However, in Khot asks audiences for their heart rates, everyday life these divisions are more blurry providing them with material evidence of