Session Information
99 ERC SES 03 E, Interactive Poster Session
Poster Session
Contribution
- Objective -
As part of the 3rd year of my doctoral research in Contemporary Studies, at the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies of the University of Coimbra, I am currently undertaking the experimental phase of a transdisciplinary exploration that looks into Arts and Design as a Ludic Space, where players are more keen for adventures and prone to collaborate.
My main objective is to acknowledge CREATIVE EMANCIPATION as an irreplaceable complement to academic learning and therefore present across every field of culture.
In this regard, my research aims to demonstrate that collaboration can be fun, and therefore by losing the need for total control of our lives, we may be able to gain autonomy and collective power over our territory, not by making games serious, but by engaging in play that is never completely predetermined, but genuinely elicited by the search to enjoy each other.
- Main Research Question -
How can Game Design spark/inspire collective action for playfully coordinated political deliberation of everyday life?
- Conceptual Framework -
The games we play entail our first experience of political education, as they require us to assume roles, experiment power, manage conflicts and make decisions within the limited a playscape (Farnè).
By interacting through games, what Fröbel called gifts, Vygotsky pivots, and Winnicott transitional objects, an educational experience is turned into self-learning practices as players learn what they need, at their own pace (Farnè).
Similarly to carnival, festivals and parties, games are arenas for cultural exchange and can be studied as evidence of material culture. The processes used to build each copy reveal the technological dexterity, material availability, visual references and cultural concerns of players and designers. Play is conceived as a spontaneous and attractive attitude, granting games with a fleeting flexibility to spread, transporting their elements across cultures, while keeping their main characteristics together (Spanos).
Since nobody can be forced to play, games allows players to relate to their environment by engaging into open-ended unconventional interactions, looking at complex issues and building low-fidelity representations of what they find relevant (Huizinga, Piaget, Vigotsky, Farné).
It is also true that play has a perverse side, when for example, players are no longer aware they are being played (Flusser, Flanagan). As manipulation, abuse and welfare tactics may seem to be justified, game designers, teachers and ultimately every authority with the privilege of crafting others' experiences are responsible for their wellbeing and must act accordingly to their needs and expectations, promoting opennes to diversity, mutual respect and care among players.
Play as a Pedagogy can be thought of as an enthusiastic system, where people cooperate with one another, in order to assure positive interdependence, preparing players to become responsible for their own path, attentive to their own motivations and to those of their peers.
Method
In order to test this ideas, I recall the cyclical structure and four stages of Kolb’s experiential learning (1984) and superimpose it over Hunicke, LeBlanc and Zubek’s MDA framework (2004) that looks into games as systems with Mechanic, Dynamic and Aesthetic elements. This operation creates a 4x4 matrix that describes games in regards to their structure and the different functions they play along its participatory developmental process. On the horizontal axis of this matrix there are 4 functions that respond to the following questions. In order for games to be memorable, these functions are to be perceived as coherent by the players, something that is quite difficult to design, but obviously not impossible: Objective: What is the game about? Productive: What artifacts/interfaces do we need to play? Interactive: What is it allowed to do within the game? Aesthetical: Why is it relevant? On the vertical axis, the matrix describes 4 stages of an experiential cycle by which emancipated players learn / design new games: Line 1 - Centered on Theory - How does play, design, culture and education relate to each other? How are they related today and how does that relation have evolved in history? In this regard, I've already published two articles in two international journals: one in Spanish [Alfabetización Multimodal: Sobre las formas de comunicar] and another in English [Games as Socio-Technical Systems: Interdisciplinary Infrastructure for a Pedagogy of Play]. Line 2 - Centered on Production - How to address creativity through different ways of being? My ongoing study of genius, our exceptional and natural disposition to imagine clever solutions rooted on resourceful analysis of the material richness at hand, turning obsolete ideas into better off configurations. Line 3 - Centered on Play - What is creativity? How do you play it? Who wants to play? From local interactions to online meeting places, virtual and tangible are no longer away from each other. This line aims at extending the magic circle outside the classroom, not by making games serious, but by engaging in exploratory play. Line 4 - Centered on Reflection - What are the constraints and enablers of creative freedom? An endeavor to unravel the fundamental nature of education: on the one side, the sensitive and spontaneous immersion into the chaos of the natural world and on the other side, an intentional and structured reflective assimilation process that leads to significant learnings.
Expected Outcomes
Along this journey I have managed to collect a series of learnings and case studies, examples of games that sustain what I’ve called, The Ludiverse: a design system to bridge the gap between users and designers, by acknowledging both as players on a common adventure. Even if these games conveyed a great vehicle to transfer learnings from theory to practice, my focus goes beyond the instrumentalization of play, as I am more interested in the integration of such didactics into a pedagogical framework that prepare people to surf chaos, to deal with unwanted situations and unforeseen results, incorporating creativity as a transdisciplinary field that provides specific tools to overcome the challenges of the reality we live in, that is not only joyful but may also have a therapeutic effect, as it allows to reinterpret traumatic experiences by building models and prototypes, that represent themselves on better off situations. My overall goal does not remain solely in a collection of games, I consider that the main contribution of this project will be the development of a network of creatives engaged in creative education, not limited to reproducing the status quo, but ingeniously addressing pertinent and complex challenges. Through an open model that can easily be adopted and reformulated by others (students, teachers, researchers, scientists, artists and designers all across the globe), I aspire to inspire attitudes of exploration, awe and curiosity, where people feel free to raise questions, suggest alternatives and build solutions to meet their own needs and such of their communities. In a few words, I expect to demonstrate that collaboration can be fun, and therefore by losing the need for total control of our lives, we may be able to create long lasting games, which in the terms of Roberto Farnè, enable a meaningful long-life education.
References
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