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PLAY

Roger Caillois (1913-1978) was a notable French sociologist whose work focused on subjects of games, play and the sacred through literary works such as the reading I chose for this week. He was awarded the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, Marcel Proust Awards and the European Union Prize for Literature.

This week’s reading is a text from a 📓 that discusses two theses of what ‘play’ is; directly connecting to this week’s theme, perhaps more so than any of the other weeks’ readings I read.

The first focuses on the elements that make up games. It suggests that games are considered ‘insignificant’ and ‘childish’, and as a form of time killing that has occurred through the surplus and excess of productive activities (such as ‘important grown up work’). This is illustrated through the example of weapons left around after war that have been reborn as toys such as ‘slingshots’, ‘shields’.

This example was interesting as I thought these objects, ironically, still symbolise the original purposes of these items but somehow they’re translated into weapons of play as opposed to actual war.

Which directly links in with the second theory: Huizinga’s Homo Ludens (which was discussed in the lecture and also in this text). This theory suggests that something is ‘created’ and stated that “culture is derived from play” as opposed to the sense of ‘removal’ and things being lost to play (“In play, all is lost” [p59]). Thus, highlighting the importance of play – in juxtaposition of the first thesis.

At this point of the reading, my views naturally gravitated towards the latter thesis as I thought that the first focused on the elements that make up the game as opposed to the actual ‘nature’ of the game; arguably, the essence of what ‘makes a game a game’ and that there is so much to what makes gameplay than the dry facts about the components of a game; the ‘characteristics, laws, instinctive basis’ and ‘the type of satisfaction they provide’ are al 🔑 ingredients in what makes a game. I really thought that the term ‘magic circle’ from Huizinga’s argument was something that resonated with what I thought play was as there is something ‘magical’ about playing and games that makes it so enjoyable and a medium for one’s emancipation from reality.

The author interestingly then tries to ‘reconcile’ these two supposedly opposing theses with the link of culture. “The spirit of play is essential to culture, but games and toys are historically the residues of culture.” – in essence, he tries to state that the two theories are pointing at the same thing, just from two different perspectives (almost like the argument of which came first, the 🐔 or the egg).  

So the essence of play remains the same the only thing different is the sociocultural environment and time period from which play occurs on and that play would have still occurred throughout history, just that they would’ve appeared as different forms whether it is born from a cultural environment where it arose from idle hands and the digression from one’s duties or whether culture was birthed from playful acts.

He then uses some examples to discuss items of gameplay that have been around throughout history, namely: the mask, strings, the ball, the kite, the pole. He talks about how play evolved through the art of imitation of real life things that have been turned to things for fun, which I thought in a way could act as a form of bonding between individuals.

This reading was very thought provoking and it was a very enjoyable read. It made me question what makes something ‘playful’ to me personally. Among the many elements of play I thought the concept of freedom was 🔑. It is what enables the sensation of ‘satisfaction’ in the player(s) involved in the game; reinforcing senses of confidence, resilience (you want to keep on trying even if you fail as you know it’s just a game), it could however also be addictive and be a for of escapism from reality is may or may not always be a good thing. There is a level of responsibility involved in the ‘game of play’; to what extent can this ‘magic circle’ be stretched? Should it be something that is managed? As a matter of fact, anything could be made into a playful game. Things like sticks and stones can be used for light laughs but it could also be used to bully someone. Maybe the 💡 of play is something like that of a seesaw; there needs to be the component of freedom in order for it to be enjoyable and fun but there also needs to be a sense of awareness, something that keeps the players in check of reality so it stays a good AND REAL experience. By this I mean it is easy to get carried away when playing but it is important to remember that if the play comes solely from the desire to escape and you lose track of the ‘playing ground’ on which play occurs on, one side of the seesaw will hit the ground and you the illusion of ‘magical fun’ will shatter – no longer be playful.

It should be something to heighten as opposed to provide the removal of bad, because playing video games may induce the sensation of stress but it won’t help you do your homework, whereas if you find ways of making your work playful it will enhance the experience and possibly make it all seem like a big game, a win-win situation.

So I would say that the best game experience would be a game with clear rules because, as paradoxical it may seem, I think the sensation of freedom is most felt when it is confined within a safe boundary. Because although these rules may seem limiting, and perhaps even constraining, without the rules play could be manipulated so easily by so many external factors rendering its objective pointless. Sort of like life; we all follow a set of rules, whether that be religion, morals, laws, unspoken social conformities, culture, tradition and I think it is these elements that make the ‘game of life’ flavour and colour. So yeah this reading got me thinking quite deeply 😂. Good topic, good read.

Michael Hutter - The Witches Seesaw

This is my favourite quote from this reading (read below). I thought it embodied it all perfectly in an almost poetic way.

“The need to prove one’s superiority

the desire to challenge, make a record, or merely overcome an obstacle

the hope for and the pursuit of the favour of destiny

pleasure in secrecy, make-believe, or disguise

fear or inspiring of fear

the search for repetition and symmetry, or in contrast, the joy of improvising, inventing, or infinitely varying solutions

solving a mystery or riddle

the satisfaction procured from all arts involving contrivance

the desire to test one’s strength, skill, speed, endurance, equilibrium, or ingenuity

conformity to rules and laws, the duty to respect them, and the temptation to circumvent them

and lastly, the intoxication, longing for ecstasy, and desire for voluptuous panic” p65

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Home

Michael Allen Fox (b.1940) is an American, Canadian, Australian writer and philosopher. He is known for writing numerous books including The Case for Animal Experimentation: An Evolutionary and Ethical Perspective, Understanding Peace and Home: A Very Short Introduction.

For this week’s topic, I will be focusing on the last book ‘Home: A Very Short Introduction.’

The novel is, as it states in the title, a short introduction to the concept of ‘Home’ and what a home is, consists of, and how it relates to oneself; very clear and relevant to this week’s theme – ‘Home’. As I read a few pages of Chapter 5 the author delves into analytical depth on what he believes a home is constructed of.

Firstly, he unravels his statement with the notion that the home is a focal point for the construction and development of self-identity. He suggests that the home ‘reflects ourselves’. He then goes further into saying how a ‘right home… can protect, heal, and restore us, express who we are now, and over time help us become who we are meant to be.’; stating a causal link between a stable home environment enabling growth of healthy personalities, which otherwise suggests that an unhealthy home environment during childhood could lead to maladaptive personalities in later life.

So what makes a home? What makes the environment different to a meaningless space?

According to Fox, the next important part of home-making is the personalised space with value induced by the objects and belongings of the owner which gives them a sense of identity and furthermore, comfort.

I was definitely able to agree with this and thought that perhaps the familiarity and nostalgic memories make you attached to these certain objects and therefore by having them placed in a space, provide sentimental value. However, what I found quite inspiring and interesting was the way the author took this further and said how;

‘this provides some kind of escape from present reality while promising self-restoration in the future.’

This was my favourite quote of this week’s read and I also thought it was sort of a poetic piece that was quite eye-opening as I never thought of the home in relation to the future; I’ve always looked retrospectively and thought the value of the house was in past experiences and memories. So that was really pleasant. Especially how his next point was how companion animals also contribute in making a house a home – as I look forward to going home-home during my weekends to see my dog :D (I call my uni flat ‘home’ and my parent’s home ‘home-home’)

The third point was in fact how a home is defined by the interactions of people. The people whom you grow up with and raise you, influence your self-development within the environment of a home. Unlike the previous point, I wasn’t as able to relate as strongly with this as much and what he says next really summed up how I feel:

‘some think this way, some do not. Those who do may depend on the folks back home to affirm their identities in an active, ongoing way, which leads to a sense of loss or emptiness when they are no longer actively present in one’s life. Others respect or at least acknowledge the influence of familial relationships, but are more independent in themselves.’

In addition, the author then uses two examples of different views of people and the home, with one being Muslim culture where when a man marries a woman he is expected to move with this wife into her mother’s house to provide for her family, illustrating the point that not everyone gets to choose who they would like to live with and be at ‘home’ with.

So I guess it was difficult to try and generalise the definition of home to everyone.

Nevertheless, the home is an essential ‘domain of humanity’ and encapsulates the essence to survival and life. The few pages of the chapter explore the importance of the home and the elements in it and how dependent we, as humans, are on it. The author explains the importance of the function of the home in serving its purpose of mundane needs and how it can be a canvas of expression of the self, physically and mentally; conveying the needs of a human being and the wants through décor and sentimental possessions that, although is contained physically within an architectural structure labelled as a ‘house’, acts more like a visual mirror and epitomises the beauty of the person’s living moments.

So some say home is where the family is at, but I think it is more accurate to say that home is where the heart is at.

Good read👍

Illustration by Vivian Ng

http://viivus.tumblr.com/post/139204111316/im-getting-more-ambitious-with-my-plant-witch

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Mobility

Why come to Slaka? Malcolm Bradbury

Malcolm Bradbury 1932-2000 is an English novelist and writer who is notorious for his dark themed and often satirical books.

Why come to Slaka? by Malcolm Bradbury is a ‘pastiche’ travel guide to a fictional Eastern European country called Slaka. The novel is written with satirical lexis employed throughout; with references to European stereotypes. It was proposed by critics, to be a satire of Romania or Bulgaria during the 1980s.

The reading has a clear, direct link with the theme mobility as it is a parody travel guide to a country called Slaka. In the seminar we explored the notion of mobility being the combination of movement with meaning. Inevitably, as it is a travel guide, Malcolm conveys this idea of meaningful travel through the various reasons he offers us of why we should come to Slaka; especially evident in the two sections of the book: Making a tour in Slaka and Travelling in Slaka.

What I loved most about the book was the author’s wit for creating humour, that carries the ever so slight potential of being deemed as controversial and offensive, by doing everything a travel guide should do (appraise the country’s values in terms of attraction and induce the tourist gaze) whilst somehow simultaneously doing the everything but that. A few examples of how he achieves this would be the terrible grammar and spelling mistakes throughout the novel. At first I thought the author was trying to convey the sense of a tour guide native to this European country whose English wasn’t that great, perhaps their second or third language. But as I read the novel more, it just felt as though he purposefully and meaningfully tried to portray the lack of enthusiasm and effort put into making the leaflet. This not only created the essence of humour in the book but also seemed to reflect the subliminal ulterior feelings of the narrator’s views on tourists visiting the country, exploring the negative impacts that increased mobility and travel induced - another theme we discussed in the seminar.

Another way he the book is effective was the use of moronic, satirical lexis employed liberally throughout the entire novel. To be honest, this was what tied my interests to the book more than anything😂. I thought this was what really conveyed the author’s motives for the book and I just loved the calm anarchy and craziness to it. Here’s one of my favourite quotes:

“Especially lovely is the month of May, when the magnolias bloomb. But other excellent seasons include autum, spring, summer, and winter. However you like to come in Slaka, we oblige. And if our transports of hotels are some-times not quite perfect (we do not mind to make a criticicm), we recall a wise saying of our Russian brothers: ‘A little rigour makes a holiday better!’”

(from the section Slaka: why to come? P28)

Personally, I really enjoyed the read and I think that it creates insight into the effects of tourism coated with a bit of humour. And I think it gives way to expressing the reality of travel, which is relevant in the modern and global world we live in today where mass tourism and travelling has become so popularised and easily accessible. However, it does delve into mockery of political constructs (lightly on capitalism and communism as the country seems to be reflective of an ex-Soviet country) and although this relates to the point discussed in our seminar about how power and politics affecting mobility and how ideas such as migration occurs and is an example of mobility, it can be controversial and offensive so if you read, just bear in mind to take it with a pinch of salt. But overall I think the book is a perfect mode for travelling through your imagination. I recommendo👍

Illustration by Gunduz Agayev

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STREETS

STREETS

illustrations by  João Fazenda 

“Strive to picture to yourself, with the greatest possible precision, beneath the network of streets, the tangle of sewers, the lines of the Metro, the invisible underground proliferation of conduits (electricity, gas, telephone lines, water mains, express letter tubes), without which no life would be possible on the surface.”

“What I hope for from it in effect, is nothing other than the record of a threefold experience of ageing: of the places themselves, of my memories, and of my writing.” P56

Georges Perec was an eccentric French novelist, Filmmaker who lived till the 80s. A lot his work is based on subjects such as loss, absence and identity.

I had the pleasure of reading the first few chapters of one of his books about streets, and funnily enough, it was named – The Street. The book is written, at first in a heavily analytical and dry manner where Perec goes into the immense detail about how a street is an area where buildings, usually houses, border a “systematically constructed area” in “parallel alignment”, followed by paragraphs of discussing issues such as, as to whom the buildings could belong to, and how the streets are a communal area that isn’t owned by a particular someone. Then there was a brief section where he touches on this idea of ‘surveillance’ where he talks about these ‘remote controlled cameras to “keep an eye on what is going on”’. – Oh the setting of this book is in France (forgot to mention, but I think the principle is easily translatable, an obsessive French guy on an investigative hunt to figure out the concept of streets). So far the author has tried to neutrally describe streets without bias however there were little snippets of opinions where he questions the system and ideas such as gentrification and Haussmannization (concepts which we have discussed during our seminar and lecture); which is especially evident when he touches on a brief historical change of the gutter system, where in the past, there was only one gutter to be found in the middle of the roadway which has developed into several to enable a better system for precipation to flow into the drainage system and ease traffic. 

Now what I was really interested in was the way the writing shifted in CHAPTER NUMERO TROIS (three).

After educating and reminding us of what a street is and its make-up, the author challenges us to try out these ‘practical exercises’. In the same manner as before, these exercises were identical in terms of exhaustive level of detail. He starts by saying: “observe the street, from time to time, with some concern for system perhaps”, note down the place, time, date, weather, what you can see (“anything, obvious things, colourless common things”). He then moves into deeper things such as the ‘beauty of the women. The fashion is for heels that are too high.’ – The connection between the people and the street.

He then encourages the reader to carry on until ‘the scene becomes improbable’ and you feel distant and that you are in ‘a strange town’, until the whole place becomes ‘strange’.

(I guess it would be like when you spell a word too many times and the word begins to feel really weird and you question if it’s the right spelling because of the way it becomes sort of unrecognisable and ‘strange’)

Finally in the last chapter he discusses the sentimental meanings of places especially if there are memories attached to these locations.

In short he is a Flaneur in his own eccentric way, in that he doesn’t seem to intervene with the situation or scene he sees but merely tries to capture and record it – almost like an artist trying to capture what he/she senses of a scene in a painting. Perez approaches his topics mainly in a neutral manner, however, judging by the way he highlights certain aspects of the system in brief notes, it seems as though, overall, he sees the system as a positive thing and something he is almost obsessed with. Although some of it was quite dry (especially at the beginning where it just seemed like a driving theory text book) I think what I liked most about it, and this topic of “Streets” was that, I was able to take a moment to comprehend the unseen constructs of placemaking, psychogeography and gentrification that happen in our day to day mundane and ‘pedestrian’ lives – even with something as simple as crossing the street. And in a way, the street is in itself an active organism with a life of its own. And when these streets come together, you get a town or a city that breathes or “never sleeps” – as they say. So overall, Yes read the book.