buzzcut blog http://buzzcut.posterous.com Most recent posts at buzzcut blog posterous.com Tue, 09 Jun 2009 10:41:02 -0700 Understanding Place: Game Studies as a System of Knowing http://buzzcut.posterous.com/understanding-place-game-studies-as-a-system http://buzzcut.posterous.com/understanding-place-game-studies-as-a-system Below is the full text of a conference proposal I submitted to the upcoming DiGRA conference . Unfortunately, the proposal was rejected, at least in part for being confusing. Fair enough. But I am posting it here is the interest of gaining additional comments and feedback, either public or private. I think the epistemological underpinnings of game studies is something I'd like to keep exploring, confusing or not!

Games can teach, but what can we learn from game studies beyond their application to games?

Much has been said about the mimetic potential of games to represent reality. The Serious Games movement models an ontological approach that sees games as a mirror creating a reflection of real world phenomenon and constructions. The presence of a game’s sense of reality to a player borrows categorically from real world phenomenon giving it a “half-reality”, to borrow Juul’s conception. Thus, a game object or action has a being tied, to some degree, to a transferable experience between the real and the virtual and allowing for a systematic criticism and exploration of these linkages.  This critical dialog may be considered the heart of what we call, “game studies”

In this view, games can speak about the world because properties of the world are embedded inside game systems and game content. Further, games allow us to generate ideas inside the virtual space of the game system and narrative open to judgement by real world criteria.

Taken together, these perspectives may best be considered games-as-model approaches, where the virtuality of the game is constantly held in strict ontological relationship to the real world.

However, a converse proposition receives less attention—the idea that knowledge about games, rather than knowledge of games provides a framework for talking about things outside of games. The body of knowledge described as game studies has a use beyond talking about games. Following the same ontological bridge that links games to the real world, we can traverse it in the opposite direction using game studies as a method for talking about specific non-game, non-virtual reality.

This paper considers the broad notion of games as epistemic systems capable of generating knowledge and understanding of the world, or at least, cultural views of worldly phenomenon. Game studies, in this mode, turns from its internally focused critical practice, here framed as an ontological practice concerned with the nature of being in a game, into a method for understanding things outside of games. The specific goal of this paper is to illustrate the potential for using games as a system of understanding through the application of the game studies concepts of “ludology versus narratology” and Caillois’ distinction between paidea and  ludus as means for understanding real world places. The first case maps the notions of a strong a ludological notion and a narratological notion to the environment of the children’s playground. This case illustrates how strengths and weaknesses in playground design can be clarified by a discussion of the inherent contestation and productive tension found in the narratology versus ludology debate (or non-debate) inside of game studies.  The second case maps the concepts of ludus and paidea to two natural places, Carlsbad Caverns National Park  and White Sands National Monument, in the United States, arguing that the management of leisure space mirrors the division proposed by Caillois and further elaborated in game studies literature. Using these cases as an initial foray into the method, this paper demonstrates the feasibility of applying game study concepts to the understanding of non-game, real world environments.

Partial Bibliography
1. Ang, S.C. Rules, gameplay, and narratives in video games. Simulation and Gaming, 37. 306-325.
2. Bogost, I. Persuasive games : the expressive power of videogames. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2007.
3. Bogost, I. Unit operations : an approach to videogame criticism. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2006.
4. Borries, F.v., Walz, S.P. and Böttger, M. (eds.). Space time play : computer games, architecture and urbanism: the next level. Birkhauser Verlag AG, Boston, MA, 2007.
5. Caillois, R. Man, play, and games. University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 2001.
6. Frasca, G. Ludologists love stories, too: notes from a debate that never took place Level Up Conference Proceedings, University of Utrecht, Utrecht, 2003.
7. Frasca, G. Ludology Meets Narratology: Similitude and Differences Between (Video)Games and Narrative, 1999.
8. Gee, J.P. What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2003.
9. Newman, J. Videogames. Routledge, London New York, 2004.
10. Nitsche, M. Video game spaces : image, play, and structure in 3D worlds. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2008.
11. Pearce, C. Theory Wars: An Argument Against Arguments in the so-called Ludology/Narratology Debate Changing Views: Worlds in Play, University of Vancouver, Vancouver, 2005.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/20429/Mug2008.jpg http://posterous.com/people/10NjHuk55kd David Thomas David David Thomas Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:18:06 -0700 The Theory of Alcoholic Architecture http://buzzcut.posterous.com/the-theory-of-alcoholic-architecture http://buzzcut.posterous.com/the-theory-of-alcoholic-architecture London now sports what it's owners have described as the world's first walk-in cocktail.

Don the sort of coverall you see in science labs and walk into a misty room. The room is the "bar" and the mist is gin and tonic.

Presumably, chilling in this cocktail and breathing deeply long enough is equivalent to actually having a drink.

It's weird and enticing. And from an architectural design perspective, it does some funny things by materializing the genus loci of a bar as alcohol and turning the usual voids into semi-present alcoholic solids. Theorists, have stiff drink and ponder this one.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/drinks/article6113791.ece

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/20429/Mug2008.jpg http://posterous.com/people/10NjHuk55kd David Thomas David David Thomas Mon, 30 Mar 2009 12:44:07 -0700 Defining the Fun Houses http://buzzcut.posterous.com/defining-the-fun-houses http://buzzcut.posterous.com/defining-the-fun-houses

As a part of my, "What makes a place fun?" research, I have postulated the idea of the "fun house" as an actual home anchored in fun as much as much as some homes are designed to be beautiful.


The question always is, "What is a fun house?"

And while I am still working out a good theoretical definition to that question, here's a good practical answer:

http://arplustest.com/1023/the-ramp-house-athens-by-archivirus/#more-1023

Yes, a house built around a skateboard ramp.

Interesting (to me at least), is how people talk about this particular "fun house"

  • "The result of the client’s request is a curved form interior, which “set the whole house as well as the inhabitant’s life, into motion”. -- Architectural Review 
  • "Converting your house into a 'skateable habitat' is one strangely cool move." -- Gizmowatch 
  • "As a kid, I was obsessed with Pee-wee's Playhouse. As an adult (at least according to my pricey movie stubs), my refined tastes would prefer The Ramp House, a 'skateable habitat.'" -- Gizmodo 
  • "Speaking of things I would have wanted as a kid, take a look at this house: it's built around a gigantic indoor skateboard ramp. I absolutely love this guy's priorities. " -- Dvice 

What I notice here is a strong push and pull around the notion of fun. The Architecture Review comment, perhaps predictably, stressed some sort of formal design purpose or insight. But nowhere is fun allowed. Gizmowatch recognizes the latent playfulness of the space, but feels the need to praise it while marginalizing it as a "strangely cool move." Meanwhile, Gizmodo and Dvice make the most common move, by suggesting that while the place grabs the author's imagination, he must quickly put it into the category of childhood. The common theme, fun = foolish, naive and childish.

And, perhaps most useful, were select comments about the house from Boing Boing readers. While many readers saw the house as a gimmick, an ostentatious display of trust fund excess or simply dangerous, a few other readers rose to the defense of the space :

"Haha, I knew a bunch of boingers would be big downers on this. This just in: Boingboing readers have decided that having fun is irresponsible."

"Dude, this is totally killer!! That's a frickin dream-house right there. Closing my eyes and ears to all of the bummer comments... ignorance is bliss."

Conclusion of the moment, a fun house is a battleground around the concept of fun!

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/20429/Mug2008.jpg http://posterous.com/people/10NjHuk55kd David Thomas David David Thomas Tue, 17 Mar 2009 11:30:29 -0700 Finding a Fun House: What makes a place fun? http://buzzcut.posterous.com/finding-a-fun-house-what-makes http://buzzcut.posterous.com/finding-a-fun-house-what-makes

(This is an excerpt from a longer argument building a description of fun and linking it to the much more explored subject of play.)

On face value the question rings true. Some places do seem more fun than others and wondering "What makes a place fun?" is equivalent to asking: "Where is a fun place we can go?"

Of course, the simplest questions can belie a complexity not obvious at casual glance. After all, fun itself is an amorphous concept that resists a universal categorization. "What is fun?"

  • Taking a nap is fun.
  • Driving fast is fun.
  • Playing football is fun.
  • Getting promoted is fun.
  • Meeting new people is fun.
  • My job is fun.
  • I had a fun time last night.
  • This weekend will be fun.
What any individual finds "fun" is ultimately contingent on a personal framework of desires, interests and intentions as well as the action of the individual themselves.  In contrast to classic concepts of aesthetics that posit the nature of beauty in and of the object itself, the aesthetic of fun balances on the relationship of the individual to the object. Disneyland is not fun, going to Disneyland is fun. A place itself is not fun or not fun. Rather, what we do in a place structures the experience of the fun. Fun is contingent on the person and the place, present in neither and dependant on both.

This notion of contingency is not new within the world of game design, a discipline focused on creating, measuring and delivering fun as an economic metric of sales success. Fun games sell.

Game designer Sid Meier is famously quoted as saying “A game is a series of interesting choices.” (For one reference to this bit of game lore, see: http://www.half-real.net/dictionary/ ) In his remark, Meier points to the contingent nature of games and fun itself. What Meier assumes in his quote is that fun relates to the concept of choice, and that this choice must be interesting. In other words, choices themselves point to the necessity not only of a contingency between the player and the game, but to a complex and solvable sort of field that makes play possible.

Chris Crawford, likewise has argued for the dependency of games on a noun/verb dichotomy that favors the action of the verb (For a good discussion on this idea, see: http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2005/01/nouns_and_verbs.html ). In other words, the nouns, the subject of play and its place, matter less than the contingency, the actions adhered to the people, places and things by the player.  In a simple sense, it’s not where you are or what you have, but what you do that defines the fun. Again, the contingency of the player frames the question of fun. No amount of “fun” things will replace any amount of fun action. Or even more strictly, things are not fun, playing with things is fun.

The question, then, “What makes a place fun?” appears to ponder the imponderable. The fun does not come from the objects or the place, but exists in the space and interaction between the player and place. Beauty may be in objects, but fun is in the moment of object interaction. To extend Crawford, nouns contain beauty, fun occurs in verbs.

Looking at Meier and Crawford side-by-side, we see a dilemma, though. If fun is only the moment of action, then the idea of fun itself dissolves. Fun in this sense is a flash of light, a transient phenomenon, a luminal experience that resists its own definition. Creating a fun game, or a fun place, would be like taking a snapshot of motion. Once the picture is taken, the subject, the motion, is gone. What remains is only a sign for the thing, the thing disappearing even as you attempt to capture it.

Of course, game developers make fun games and game players routinely describe games that they have played as fun and games that they expect to play as fun. 

The trouble comes with trying to reconcile the nature of fun with ease at which we use the term.  Because what we mean by fun is not reduced to the indivisible moment of action, rather points to the tangible contingency or interaction between the player and the played. Fun includes the memory of the past and the expectations of the future. The central contingency of fun is the conceptual connecting point of the past and the present.

So how does fun relate to places or games?

These observations, thankfully, do not reduce the question, “What makes a place fun?” to absurdity. Instead, they point to a central contradiction: Fun may operate as a contingency in the moment of experience. Fun may not be in the place or in the objects of the place, a property to be experienced universally.  But like a ghost, fun lingers in the place, haunting with a memory and an echo of a feeling and an active experience that once was and might be once again. In this way, the fun house is the twin to the haunted house—a place imbibed with a perceivable sprit, an active history linked to a past action and an ongoing manifestation, an imbibed future.

The question “What makes a place fun?” then, may be read as contingent itself. The question both poses a plea to remember the past—what made this place fun?—along with a hope for the future—what will make this place fun again? Fun is never present, but only lingers as a memory and shimmers as promise, a context in the present moment.

As result of this fundamental contingency, fun becomes a portable concept, referring to a matrix of hopes and memories, recollections and expectations, ambiguous in its nature. 

(Next up: Finding a Play House: What makes a place playful?)

Questions waiting answers:

* What is play?
* What is the relationship of play to fun?
* What, exactly, is an "interesting choice"?
* How do the concepts described here relate to other notions of fun, such as Koster's A Theory of Fun?

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/20429/Mug2008.jpg http://posterous.com/people/10NjHuk55kd David Thomas David David Thomas Fri, 20 Feb 2009 10:30:54 -0800 Fun and Games with Architecture http://buzzcut.posterous.com/fun-and-games-with-architectur http://buzzcut.posterous.com/fun-and-games-with-architectur Some recent links sifted from the great shifting data mass of the Interwebs:

Electronic Playgrounds
http://www.physorg.com/news109517949.html 
What happens when an international playground equipment maker decides to go digital? i.play is supposed to blend together the fun of videogames with the physical activity of a playground. To my mind, what this really does is drastically misunderstand both videogames and playgrounds. Why so? As a game, the scenarios seem pretty routine, a virtual version of tag. As a playground, it's pretty sterlie--not a lot of use participation besides running around (and you don't need a playground for that) and not a lot of narrative content (Why are we running around?).

Architecture, Games and Game Developers
http://gamecareerguide.com/features/705/masters_thesis_game_design_and_.php?page=2
On my list of things to read, a masters thesis on the relationship between architecture and videogame development. What seems most promising is the suggestion that architectural design and game design share enough connecting tissues to use one to talk about the other. At the very least, the idea of player-centric game design as a way to rethink the ossified method of designing an architectural program is a great idea!

Video Game Spaces: Image, Play, and Structure in 3D Worlds
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11754

What does architecture have to do with games? For Michael Nitsche the answer is 3D. Plenty of writers have noticed the inherent spatiality of games. But Michael tackles the subject in a manner more useful to thinking about the connection of architecture to games by honing in on 3D games. Sure, there are all kinds of non-3D games. But the market has definitely favored 3D virtual spaces. So, this book is particularly relevant in its analysis of those games spaces. I've read through the introduction (available on the MIT link above) and am looking forward to reading the rest of the book. My big question as I aborb Michae's ideas is this: OK, we can borrow certain forms of architectural theory to talk about game space. But what can we borrow from game space to talk about architectural spaces? See the post above for possible answer!

Also, check out Michael's interview with Henry Jenkins:

http://henryjenkins.org/2009/02/what_architecture_and_urban_pl.html


Cluclu Land
http://versusclucluland.blogspot.com/

There's a lot of great blogs and a lot of smart people. One of my favorite places to find both is Versus Cluclu Land. The topics vary, but the blog never ever worries about coming off too smart. As a result, it always seems to have something that gets you thinking. Recently, a conversation about Wagner, Gesamtkunstwerk and aesthetics has sucked me in!

Unusual Life
http://unusuallife.com 

In a world of endless weirdism, here's a blog that helps track some of those weird places.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/20429/Mug2008.jpg http://posterous.com/people/10NjHuk55kd David Thomas David David Thomas Thu, 15 Jan 2009 21:51:44 -0800 Architecture, stories and the importance of characters http://buzzcut.posterous.com/architecture-stories-and-the-i http://buzzcut.posterous.com/architecture-stories-and-the-i
The idea of a narrative environment isn't new. For as long as designers have considered the symbolic potential of landscape and architectural designs, the foundation for seeing space as story were in place.

So, it's pretty common to for architects to discuss the program of a building, for instance, in terms of its dramatic pacing or a facade in terms of its literary possibilities. What you don't hear much about are the characters which make literary storytelling work. Stories have characters. So don't narrative environments need them too?

I suppose the assumption is that the building's viewer is the character and the design of a place seeks to embody the viewer into a specific, designed role--shopper, tourist, voyeur, adventurer, explorer, etc.

Then you encounter the well-known, but less-scrutinized character mechanics of the Disney parks. Sure, Disney is about as narrative as any designed place can be. And part of the reason why just might have to do with the odd use of characters.

A site that collects the various character appearances and rates them according to frequency provides a glimpse into the attraction and power of costumed characters wandering in a heavily themed storybook world:

http://home.att.net/~disneysue/characters/wdw/disneyrare.html

Some key things to consider about the Disney park characters:

  • They all anchor specific stories, or story arcs in the Disney world.
  • Most of the costumes are so elaborate and sculpural that they qualify as a sort of architecture in their own right
  • The locations and frequencies of the character appearances are tightly managed, or maybe more percisely scripted, So, for example, don't expect to see Captain Jack Sparrow wandering in Tomorrowland (unless as a part of the time-space rupturing parades that allow the entire Disney subconscious to flow, temporarily, throughout all lands).
  • All of the characters will sign autographs. So, while most Disney attractions stand mute, providing only pictures, the characters give a script, a symbol of materiality more personal and seemingly more rare than any other Disney souvenir. In this way, the character autograph is the most perfect tourist memento--something intimate but ultimately fake and removed--a pretend signature of a pretend person written by an employ temporarily inhabiting a portable structure.
In terms of videogames, that most environmental form of storytelling, you can see a similar reflection in the use of character, and some opportunities:
  • Game characters are as much a part of the gameplay as the game story. Interactive characters that only exist to forward the plot have fallen out of favor in terms of characters that both advance the plot and provide interactive possibility. Fallout 3 stands a perfect example here, where you talk to characters to forward the plot, and the game.
  • As a result, the characters in a game work much as the architecture does, limiting action, providing focus and allowing opportunity. In every game that asks the player, "Go find person X" could easily be replaced with "Go find place Y".
  • When characters are done well, they are placed and paced as carefully has the locations they inhabit. Finding the hermit on the hill or being sent to look for the princess in another castle.recognizes the inherent spatiality of character in an environmental story.
  • Game characters may not sign autographs, but they typically grant players information or items key to a quest.
Where does this lead? Well, Disneyland and videogames both integrate character into place by way of making the narrative ahere to the place. Is this something other narrative environments could model? At the very least, it does seem that it would make architecture more fun if they did!


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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/20429/Mug2008.jpg http://posterous.com/people/10NjHuk55kd David Thomas David David Thomas Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:36:43 -0800 Tilt-Shift for Dummies http://buzzcut.posterous.com/tilt-shift-for-dummies http://buzzcut.posterous.com/tilt-shift-for-dummies

OK, the tilt-shift technique--the one that makes real photos look like shots of miniature models by way of manipulating the depth of field--may be the fad of the moment. But it also points a finger at just how delicate our grasp of media is in a much more profound way. Without much effort, we can fool the eye that an image of a real place is actually an image of a fake place. The point is, of course, that media can very well be the message. It also happens to support the argument that mediation of any type is a step toward fantasy. Why else do we see the tilt-shift universe as a cute, wonderful and magical doll house world?


Which only makes http://tiltshiftmaker.com/ all  that much cooler. The  Web site is dedicated to the technique and provides a very simple, but quite effective tool for turning your images into tilt-shift fantasylands, 

Here's my view of Aspen, from the gondola courtesy of tiltshiftmaker (and yes, I know, Aspen wasn't real in the first place!):

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/20429/Mug2008.jpg http://posterous.com/people/10NjHuk55kd David Thomas David David Thomas Mon, 29 Dec 2008 09:30:06 -0800 Architecture and Planning: It's All Fun and Games http://buzzcut.posterous.com/architecture-and-planning-its http://buzzcut.posterous.com/architecture-and-planning-its
As I work on wrapping up my end-of-the year, I have a handful of links that deserve commentary, but get a structured dump in the interest of making things neat:

Cities as as systems/games and systems literacy 
Thinking in systems can help us make better games, of course. But can thinking about cities as games help us make better games?

Cities are systems, or rather, many systems that interconnect. Like buildings, they can be thought of as having layers, each changing at its own pace. If those layers are loosely coupled, the city — like the building — can adapt.

Recently, new urban layers/systems have started to emerge. They are made up of rapidly proliferating computing power, carried by people and embedded in the environment, used to access vast amounts of data.

At the same time, games have given rise to a new form of literacy —systemic literacy. However, to date, players have mostly inhabited the systems that make up games. They can read them. Writing, on the other hand, is another matter. True systemic literacy means being able tochange the systems you inhabit.

True read/write systemic literacy can be used to craft games, yes. But it can also be used to see that many other problems and challenges in daily life are systemic ones.

Here the author asks a very good question about our need for authenticity in hobby models. His solution is proposed as a project:

A few things collided in my head a while ago:

* How much I like model railway lay-outs (a lot)

* A wondering about why model railway lay-outs always evoke the past - rarely the future

Be sure to follow the blog to keep up to date on the project status, dubbed Lyddle End 2050, or check the tag lyddleend2050 on http://delicious.com/search?p=lyddleend2050+&u=&chk=&context=all&fr=del_icio_us&lc=0">Delicious  or Flickr .

Reflexive Architecture in Second Life 
Second Life might be getting a little long in the tooth. Still, productive prototypers continue to find uses for the world. In this case, mocking up smart materials that provide a responsive program give a glimpse into the potential beauty, and visual clutter, of the new modern building of tomorrow.


Original Sin  
The New York Times, a little late to the party perhaps, recaps how architects use SL to prototype play and peddle their wares.



Dubai 
When it comes to architecture and fun, you have to keep tabs on Dubai. A review of a recent book on the city state underlines the book's subtitle--"The vulnerability of success".

Gamespace  
A collection of papers and the outline of a dissertation in development, all situated in the intersection of games and architecture and focused on spatiality.

And, as always, take a look at the Delicious blog roll. I keep that up to date with promising links of relevant interest.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/20429/Mug2008.jpg http://posterous.com/people/10NjHuk55kd David Thomas David David Thomas Fri, 19 Dec 2008 10:56:08 -0800 Architects Just Wanna Have Fun http://buzzcut.posterous.com/architects-just-wanna-have-fun http://buzzcut.posterous.com/architects-just-wanna-have-fun I can only imagine what kind of wild parties star architects throw. At least, they give the impression of having a really good time with their amusing structures designed to mask their obvious playfulness with somber theorizing and mannered justifications.

Still, I figure the vast rank and file of environmental designers dream about weird, wild and kooky structures. They just don't get as many obvious chances to express them.

This is the conclusion I come to when thinking about things like the Google SketchUp Gingerbread House Design Competition. On first glance, this is just a bit of seasonal good cheer and some sly marketing fun put on by Google to get its SketchUp community to try some new things. Likewise, this little competition with no prizes touches the exact point I want to make, namely that inside every architect is a child that wants to play with design and make something unabashedly fun.

And Google is not alone in mashing up the architectural competition with holiday food models. Offbeathomes.com (a very eclectic and cool architectural blog I recently stumbled across), has its own portfolio of notable gingerbread homes and points to Bake for a Change , eco-friendly gingerbread house builds .

Now if we could only get the housing industry to put so much creative effort and joy into the production of actual fun domiciles!


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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/20429/Mug2008.jpg http://posterous.com/people/10NjHuk55kd David Thomas David David Thomas Tue, 09 Dec 2008 08:53:00 -0800 Unusual Buildings http://buzzcut.posterous.com/unusual-buildings http://buzzcut.posterous.com/unusual-buildings Call them follies, flights of fancy or simply playful disruptions of more staid architectural design. Whatever the label, people continue to build idosynchratic structures that manage to express imagination, whimsy and fun above all else.

The Village of Joy blog rounds up lists of all kinds of wonderment, from crazy ads to optical illusions. Their collection of architectural oddities  ranges all over the topical and geographical map. And while it lacks any clear criteria for lists such as "The 10 Strangest Buildings in the World ", the visual surveys do manage to crack a smile and raise the question--what is it about these buildings that make them attractive, that make them seem like fun?

Also, visit sister site Unusual-architecture.com for photo blogging of the same crazy collection of buildings.


See and download the full gallery on posterous

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/20429/Mug2008.jpg http://posterous.com/people/10NjHuk55kd David Thomas David David Thomas Wed, 03 Dec 2008 21:38:35 -0800 Mid-Century Modern Gingerbread House http://buzzcut.posterous.com/mid-century-modern-gingerbread http://buzzcut.posterous.com/mid-century-modern-gingerbread Hmm. Seems like this would be an obvious choice. Making gingerbread houses on modernism lines certainly provides a simple method for organizing regular graham cracker elements into recognizable shapes. But credit this creator for assembling the Eames Case study house as a seasonal, eatable decoration !

As it turns out, it works out pretty well in chocolate too.

And the idea of marrying the clean lines of crackers to modern designs has at least a few followers 


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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/20429/Mug2008.jpg http://posterous.com/people/10NjHuk55kd David Thomas David David Thomas Wed, 03 Dec 2008 09:11:38 -0800 Art Gallery Game http://buzzcut.posterous.com/art-gallery-game http://buzzcut.posterous.com/art-gallery-game From the always remarkably smart and interesting Life Without Buildings blog:

A sculptor with a sense of humor ("postmodernist fun," some have said), Chris Saucedo creates site-specific work that transforms galleries into gameboards and back again. In the above image, a small scale-model of the New Orleans art gallery, Good Children, has been built in the form of one of those get-the-ball-through-the-hole games. Installed next to the model is a scaled depiction of the game's "ball." Thus, space becomes an unplayable, implied version of the carefully crafted "game" where visitors actually occupy the board. Saucedo's installations repurpose and reprogram architecture without actually building anything or changing the space.

What's most interesting here is the implication that a place can be turned into a play space through the manipulation of spatially anchored signs, and even more odd, that the final space becomes "playful" even though you can't actually play with the space, only in the space. This isn't a particularly unusual move, either. When someone decorates their home office after Disney's Haunted Mansion, for example, you don't turn your desk into a ride, but a sign for the ride. The desk becomes playful even though you can't ride it.

The implication here is that we have a set of signs for play and for fun. And despite some notion that play and fun are activities, it seems pretty clear that they are also strong concepts. Putting a poster of some idyllic beach on your office wall isn't just about daydreaming, it is also an invocation of the fun, an invitation to let the mind play at the notion of leisure.

This also reminds me of an event a few years ago promoting Second Life. We were at a bar in San Francisco. On screen was a virtual version of the bar, recreated in Second Life, with various online avatars partying along side in parallel. The superimposition of the real and the virtual was a happy co-incidence rather than anything jarring or stupidly fake.





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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/20429/Mug2008.jpg http://posterous.com/people/10NjHuk55kd David Thomas David David Thomas Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:53:45 -0800 Haunted Virtual Mansion http://buzzcut.posterous.com/haunted-virtual-mansion http://buzzcut.posterous.com/haunted-virtual-mansion What do you get when you mash up the American historicist fantasy of the home with the haunted house house, destination leisure, videogames and an insatiable taste for post-modern irony?

This:



This video provides a walkthrough of a Counter-Strike mod simulating the famous recreation in Disney World's Magic Kingdom of the equally famous original facsimile haunted house in California's Disneyland (The Disney World version is set in Liberty Square rather than New Orleans and oddly features a Tudor manor facade with ornament pulled directly from the chess board).

What to make of this? Well a few points come to mind and deserve some sort of integrated theory at some point:

  • The haunted house is a popular form of American myth
  • There is a specific form of haunted house that is distinctly American, although tightly tied to the Gothic revival in architecture of the early 1800 and conindicing with the rise of Gothic horror literature (such as Shelley's Frankenstein in 1818).
  • The original Haunted Mansion shows the link to architecture is more tenuous than that to literature (since the Disneyland building looks like an antebellum mansion with a strong Greek revival portico and nothing of the Gothic).
  • However, the Disney castmembers who acts as guides in the ride model their behavior after dour Victorian maids and butlers.
  • Part of the fun of a Disney park is that it obviously plays with being real, while remaining childish and intentionally not real.
  • Which leads to a twin facincation with its reality/unreality that transfer through to a virtual recreation inside a game engine.
  • The video viewers facincation is, in part, a marveling at the level of detail that went into the recreation of the Mansion as a 3D model. An equal part of the attraction is reliving the ride in simulated form, recognizing detail that makes the artificial recreation feel more real.
  • The unifying principle of the Disney Haunted Mansions and Mansion simulations relates directly to their visibility--how much they look like amusing, stsylized version of places that only ever existed in imagination and literature.
Finally, I should point out, there are many more of these ride recreations. Ride simulation remains a healthy culture!

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/20429/Mug2008.jpg http://posterous.com/people/10NjHuk55kd David Thomas David David Thomas Sun, 23 Nov 2008 21:29:48 -0800 Will Wright: Architect http://buzzcut.posterous.com/will-wright-architect http://buzzcut.posterous.com/will-wright-architect There's a wonderfully contemplative puff piece in the New Yorks Times about SimCity/Sims/Spore creator Will Wright.

The story lists short answers to oddball questions. The one that caught my attention was:

Recurring dreams: They are architectural. They are about very specific buildings and houses. I remember them down to the level where I can make blueprints of them.

Sure, you could make too much of the quote. Then again, I'll hang onto this as one more scrap of evidence in my growing suspicion that what architects have been doing for a long time is what videogame designers have started doing recently.


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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/20429/Mug2008.jpg http://posterous.com/people/10NjHuk55kd David Thomas David David Thomas Tue, 18 Nov 2008 08:25:51 -0800 The Ludic Age http://buzzcut.posterous.com/the-ludic-age http://buzzcut.posterous.com/the-ludic-age
During this year's Game for Change conference, quick thinker and creative mind Eric Zimmerman dropped a new concept on the audience, "Maybe, ", he suggested, "We are living in the Ludic Age ."

His point was well received by a room full of people hoping to change the world through play and games. And his concept made sense on the surface. The industrial age led to the information age and now that we are drowning in all that information and technology, maybe games were helping us figure out how to deal with it all. Whether we had entered the age of games or not, it seemed plausible to at least hope we were.

As I work through the question of "What makes a place fun?" I find another reason to give Eric's idea further consideration--the ebb and flow of the romantic and rationalist tendencies in culture.

If we think about Romanticism as reading truth in the visible and the human response to that truth, contrasted by the Rationalist tendency to seek natural truth beyond the surface, in the observable matter of the universe, then we set up the dichotomy that sticks with us to this day. Is truth empirical science or human experience? The Romantic movement is most closely associated with the an 19th Century reaction to the Rational efforts of the industrial age. Faced with the ugly truth of people treated like parts in a machine and tied to a ticking clock, the Romantics were concerned with the shape of experience and the power of narrative. The Romantic and Rational have pushed back and forth ever since.

Today, the Information Age, the Digital Age, is another Rationalist turn, whereby computers are seen as the basis for encoding all experience as binary quanta. Perhaps no one has voiced an objection to this point-of-view more eloquently than computer pioneer Joseph Weizenbaum when he wrote:

""Beginning perhaps with Francis Bacon's misreading of the genuine promise of science, man has been seduced into wishing and working for the establishment of an age of rationality, but with his vision of rationality tragically twisted so as to equate it with logicality. Thus have we very nearly come to the point where almost every genuine human dilemma is seen as a mere paradox, as a merely apparent contradiction that could be untangled by judicious applications of cold logic derived from a higher standpoint Even murderous wars have come to perceived as mere problems to be solved by hordes of professional problem solvers." (Quote in The New Media Reader, p374)

This from the man that programmed ELIZA a piece of software that famously simulated a psychologist. He was deeply concerned that we trusted our rational mode too much, up to and including considering his computer science experiment a viable tool for helping people with their psychological problems. His call for a new humanism stopped short of a Romantic point of view, but its decisive criticism of the Rational opens the door for an alternative.

Living in the shadow of Weizenbaum, as it were, perhaps now we see a Romantic turn, a return to the idea that play, imagination, creativity and sublime human experience matter more than the output of a computer. Perhaps, the "Ludic Age" is really a response to the Rationalism of the Information Age.

Turning to architecture, it's hard to argue that the super stars of architectural design have not already made the shift back to the Romantic mode. Koolhaas' Dubai projects can stand for the time and speak to a sensibility more Ruskin than van der Rohe, more play than work and more ludic than information. In short, more fun.

rem600.jpg 

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/20429/Mug2008.jpg http://posterous.com/people/10NjHuk55kd David Thomas David David Thomas Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:39:49 -0800 Get Small -- Landscape, Scale and Fun http://buzzcut.posterous.com/get-small-landscape-scale-and http://buzzcut.posterous.com/get-small-landscape-scale-and What makes a place fun? 

Scale seems to have something to do with it.

As any SimCity player can tell you, part of what makes that game fun is playing a powerful being that can dink with a giant city. It's fun to feel big, or at least, it's fun to look at tiny things.

London-based slinkachu  creates tiny urban tableaux from miniature figures placed in satirical and surprising settings. You might find police investigating a drowning victim in a puddle, or thrill-seekers riding a real snail. Pictures of the tiny people close up and then from a pedestrian point of view makes clear the exaggerations in scale and through these contrasts the comedy works.

San Francisco-based artist Krista Peel has created a large number of doll house-inspired miniature art projects. Her 2009 calendar project, Public Park  provided a 52" x 30" HO scale park and invited fellow artists to create scenes to place in the park. The Candy Land-colored scenes combine miniature whimsy with a landscape that seems real enough that you find yourself wishing that it was.

What's the critical place of scale in fun? These projects suggest a few answers--surprising juxtaposition, childlike wonder at toy-sized objects, unexpected collisions of naive and serious content and, well, there's just something magical about tiny pretend people.


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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/20429/Mug2008.jpg http://posterous.com/people/10NjHuk55kd David Thomas David David Thomas Mon, 10 Nov 2008 07:53:44 -0800 Public Art WTF? Part 2 http://buzzcut.posterous.com/public-art-wtf-part-2 http://buzzcut.posterous.com/public-art-wtf-part-2

Viewed from a distance, the pile of big read beans, or bags, on the east end of the 16th street pedestrian bridge, looks sort of like a pile of frosting or a Dr. Suess Christmas tree. Once you get closer, the color is a deep red that makes you think of blood and the limp elements look like sand bags, or melted candy. It's an image both disturbing and funny.

Lacking any other context, at the moment, than police tape, it's not clear whether the piece is a temporary exhibit, still unfinished, or some well-intentioned comment about the war. As I looked at the sculpture a man walking by muttered, "Body bags?".

Public art can serve a number of functions from creating beauty and repose in a busy place to asking questions and engaging citizens. And at this point, while I don't care for the piece much on its own, nestled in the looping concrete and steel ramp of the pedestrian bridge, it provides a jarring moment in the otherwise cleanly modern city stroll. It just gives you something to look at (in fact the color and shape demands that you look at it) pulling your eye way from the shops, apartments and city traffic all around you. This is active public art that demands a dialog. Not surprisingly, then, graffiti has already appeared, a sort of aesthetic comment left on the base of the piece like some urban blogger answering the boisterous argument of the original work.

I don't know if the bloody beans sculpture is any good. But it is fun!

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/20429/Mug2008.jpg http://posterous.com/people/10NjHuk55kd David Thomas David David Thomas Sat, 08 Nov 2008 07:16:18 -0800 Public art WTF? http://buzzcut.posterous.com/public-art-wtf http://buzzcut.posterous.com/public-art-wtf Don't get me wrong, I am a big fan of public art. But this piece sprung up over night on my path to downtown and just remind me of....well, the mind sort of boggles doesn't it? Bloody beans would be a generous description. Really, it just looks like a pile of crap.

Who knows, maybe it will grow on me. I 'll end up seeeing it about twice a day 5 days a week.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/20429/Mug2008.jpg http://posterous.com/people/10NjHuk55kd David Thomas David David Thomas Thu, 06 Nov 2008 21:36:23 -0800 Hell House / Haunted House http://buzzcut.posterous.com/hell-house-haunted-house http://buzzcut.posterous.com/hell-house-haunted-house A twitter post from an NYC friend reminded me of my long ago visit to a local Denver "Hell House". It was over 10 years ago, and my recollection is a bit fuzzy. But some of the memorable facts are these:

  • I think this was one of the early versions of the original Hell House concept, where a church would stage a reasonably gruesome haunted house desgned to show you what happens when you ally with the devil.
  • Some of the rooms in the house included a patient dying of AIDS, a couple of kids mangled in a drunk driving accident and, the classic abortion scene, where a doctor pulls a bloody, pulstating baby (doll) from a hysterically overacting teenager.
  • The climax of the piece was a decent to hell which I recall smelled sort of annoyingly of rotten eggs (sulpher, maybe?) and populated by a screaming souls writhing about on the church cafeteria floor begging for mercy while the devil, who looked suspiciously like John Lovitz, cackled and invited us to join them.
  • My friend Bruce and I had spent the hour or so waiting in line drinking Jack and Coke out of Arby's cups. So, we politely laughed our way through all the "horror". But the worse was yet to come.
  • Before you could leave, an earnest white haired gentleman huddled our group--which consisted of a bunch of teenagers and us--and asked us to pray. Abortions and dying AIDS patients played played by goofy Christian teenagers was easy to laugh at. But this was uncomfortable. While everyone bowed their head and prayed, Bruce and I looked at each other and wondered what would be more discourteous, just wait it out or bolt. I don't remember what we did because I turned my brain off.

These anecdotes seems worth remembering as I spend time researching the idea of the fun house, the haunted house and the house turned into a play house by its occupants. In this case, the house of worship becomes a play house in the sense of hosting a inverted passion play, meant to turn the sinner onto the right road with a bit of camp and some earnest (if badly acted) theater. This is really a lot different than a regular haunted house, which paces its thrills to stimulated waves of excitement and rest for no other purpose that to create a short term drama linked to some pretty tired tropes--guy with chainsaw, vampire on the loose, maniac with a knife, eerie ghost, etc,

So, a quick linage goes in reverse from Hell House, to haunted house, to 1950s television and monster movies and carnival fun houses to Victorian Gothic literature to the endless depths of fear that stalk the civilized mind. Sure, this is a certain kind of historiography of horror with its implied rhetorical point. But it does place the Hell House at the right end of an evolving chain of play spaces where dark themes serve different masters and continue to center the concept of the home--the safe place--as the inside-out dangerous place.

And maybe that's why the Hollywood Hell House--a later version of the same concept--has managed to attracte so many wry celebs to play everything from the devil to Jesus. The Haunted House is a simulacra of our fears.


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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/20429/Mug2008.jpg http://posterous.com/people/10NjHuk55kd David Thomas David David Thomas Wed, 05 Nov 2008 18:38:00 -0800 Far Cry 2 http://buzzcut.posterous.com/far-cry-2 http://buzzcut.posterous.com/far-cry-2

The increase of computing power in game consoles (and by proxy games
on personal computers) has allowed for the both the increase in the
graphic detail of game environments as well as the increase in their
size and scope.

Far Cry 2 pushes the art of level design forward offering 50 square
kilometers of game levels featuring a unparalleled grain of
detail--especially in the foliage.

A big part of the fun of this game is feeling like you are in the
middle of some mid-continent African bush war. And despite its Soldier
of Fortune meets Disney;s Animal Kingdom aethetic, it's a reasosnable
fun game to play.

What I find the most interesting is that the included level editor not
only allows you to create settings as rich and evokative as those in
the game, but that with very little effort, you can make a place that
feels real and compelling. Why? Graphic detail is one. But more
important--trees and bushes. Plop down a couple of ramshackle
buildings on sand and it looks like a game. Pile on a forest of trees
and ferns, drooping vines and creeping ground cover and you have an
oasis that a National Geographic photographer could love.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/20429/Mug2008.jpg http://posterous.com/people/10NjHuk55kd David Thomas David David Thomas