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Summary homo ludens chapter X Play-forms in art

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Mark workshop #1

End result of the workshop with mark in the photostudio.

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Meme sketches

With the images we collected as “meme elements” in the meme database, I quickly made some abstract memes just to see what some of these memes people would create on the open day could look like. So this is just to play with the images and test them out. 

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Typography #3

The assignment is to take this text:

“When time is limited, travel by rocket, unless cost is limited, go by space ship. When only cost is limited, an astrobus should be used (for journeys of less than 10 orbs), and a satellite for longer journeys. Cosmocars are recommended when there are no constraints on time or cost, (unless the distance to be travelled exceeds 10 orbs)”

and make it into an image that is really easy to understand.

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Typography #2

In this class we had to create a typographic spread and create a specsheet so another student could easily recreate the spread themselves. In the first spread we had to use as much text as possible. In the second text we had to use the least text possible. 

spread 1. The most text possible on a spread

spread 2. The least text possible on a spread

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Typography #1

In this lesson we had to take a text by Gerard Unger and design a classic typographic spread. 

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Theory essay #2nd draft

In my previous draft I asked myself: “How can I become homo ludens?” Not knowing this is Johan Huizinga’s general term to replace homo sapiens. As for Huizinga’s theory I already fall under the term homo ludens. So maybe my question should not be “how can I become homo ludens?” but rather 

 How can and will homo ludens grow and evolve? 

When we think about the word “play” what comes to mind? For some it might be theatre, others brains will shift to sports or videogames. The word “play” also connotates to fond memories of our childhood, playing with friends, playing with toy cars and dolls, fighting each other with sticks we found in the woods.

What is play and why do we need it?

Many psychologists, for instance, claim that playing enables people to discharge excess energy or find substitute gratification. Others argue that playing helps children to strengthen their sense of self-restraint, to cultivate the moral or cognitive skills necessary for normal adult life or to build up and sustain a coherent ego identity. What is found in some young children that grew up with less play and more gaming is an absence of knowledge on how to act accordingly in various social situations. There was no absence in empathy but rather an absence of tact in decision making.

When parents watch their children play they have an overview of their child’s behavior and actions towards other children. If the child for instance grabs a toy from another kids hands, the parent can interfere “Give that back! That doesn’t belong to you, it belongs to her”. This way the parent has an active parenting role in the child’s growth.

Even though many argue play serves no purpose other than playing itself, children learn by playing with other children. The field of play creates a so called “magic circle” in which can be experimented. While outside of the circle a child has to obey their parents and has to listen to the strict voice of authority, within the magic circle a child can test the boundaries of what is deemed appropriate or inappropriate behavior.

For play to perform that role of a testing lab it has to fulfill an important condition: It has to be fun. Just like food and sex, play triggers the reward system in our brains. We do it to survive, but firstly because we like doing it. For children play comes naturally, but adults gradually stop playing for the experience. What becomes more important is the purpose of the game, the outcome, the gain. While the experience itself is where the essence of play hides.

Johan Huizinga was a dutch anthropologist who wrote the famous book homo ludens in 1938. The book was published in a time when the second world war was emerging. While videogames have only been around since the early 1970’s. While in this day and age; Artificial intelligence has completely changed the world of gaming. Youtube has opened up a whole new field of entertainment.

These new developments have changed the way kids play forever. Kids used to play with toys, they played outside, they played sports, they played pretend.

Kids used to watch television programs. Parents had influence on what programs their kids watch. Kids start using computers and the internet way earlier these days. They have smartphones. Kids have social media accounts and watch youtubers.

While watching television has been seen as a very passive way to spend your time, television has been replaced by social media, youtube, gaming etc.

4 types of play

Johan Huizinga was a dutch anthropologist who wrote the famous book homo ludens in 1938. Huizinga wrote his book right before the first world war was to unfold right in front of him. Notable is that the book is still as relevant as it was in 1938 when it was originally published. In this book Huizinga explains the 4 types of play: Agon, Alea, Mimicry and Ilynx.

Agon stands for competition; competitive games and competition. Alea stands for games with chance, players cannot control the outcome of said games. Mimicry stands for imitation; players pretend to be someone or something else. Ilynx stands for vertigo; This type of play manifests itself into for example extreme sports.

Funnily enough Huizinga doesn’t mention music as a form of play in his book. Which is strange in my opinion. Especially when many other play theorists do.

Huizinga sees play in much more than just the obvious list of tasks. Play can be found in courtcases and giftgiving. In law and war.

With Anders Breivik we have witnessed the first case of a gamer with visible egodeath.

LARP might be the most pure form adults can play in.

With LARP (live action role playing) people have a place where they can enter the magic circle once again. LARPING is the form of play closest to the form of play we would partake in as little kids. This is reason society does not take these individuals as seriously as for instance soccer players. A man who plays a sport 2 times a week is seen as active and healthy. While a LARPER is seen as a childish individual not to be taken seriously. While both of them partake in play, one form of play is accepted while the other is scrutinized (ridiculed).

A vast difference in these 2 forms of play is that one is focused on physical activity while the other doesn’t have to be. The stereotypical form of LARP that people usually imagine contains the medieval times, sword fighting and throwing sandbags made to symbolize magic power beams. While

LARP ‘the most ludic form of play’ is derieved from stories of war. People wanted to reenact wars and. People wanted to reenact the story of the lord of the rings. LARP evolved with the rise of dungeons and dragons

LARP in Finland started in 1985 and Norway was initiated in 1989, more or less simultaneously by groups in Oslo and Trondheim. The first Danish games were also played in the late 1980s.

The first LARPing events were mostly based on mythical scenes, and ancient battles and what larpers call “childhood LARP” which Is where kids play pretend. 

Childhood larp

In the year 1974 dungeons and dragons was first published. It remains one of the earliest fantasy tabletop games. After D&D came out people wanted to integrate the rules and experience of fantasy tabletop games into historical reenactment.

After this one might ask themselves, what differentiates LARP from theatre? In what way theatre or even improv theatre is vastly different from LARP is the reasoning behind the action. Theatre is meant for the entertainment of theto entertain an audience watching the play. In a LARP there is no audience. The second major difference this represents is that where an audience watches a play, the spectators will have to pay for tickets to watch said play, which means economic gain for the theatre and a paycheck for actors.

Play theorists claim play is free, and people that play for economic gain are not in fact playing.  

I haven’t actually read the whole book “homo ludens” but I am reading it. I will adjust and rewrite my essay whenever I please. My teacher advised me to pick one chapter from the book that really resonates with me and write my essay based on that. I am still struggling to find the right chapter, but I will keep reading. 

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Theory essay #1st draft

Situationist ideology

What is situationism? Situationism is the theory that human behaviour is determined by surrounding circumstances rather than by personal qualities.

 a revolutionary political theory which regards modern industrial society as being inevitably oppressive and exploitative.

 The spectacle

What is the spectacle? When Guy Debord talks about the spectacle, what does he mean by that? Mass media. "its most glaring superficial manifestation.".That is the spectacle. That is what I have read. But is that all? The book examines the “Spectacle,” Debord’s term for the everyday manifestation of capitalist-driven phenomena; advertising, television, film, and celebrity (and now social media). Debord describes the spectacle as capitalism’s instrument for distracting and pacifying the masses. 

We also know there is no escaping the spectacle. Even if you swap your smartphone for an old nokia, you will still be faced with the spectacle. The spectacle can be found on every screen that you look at. It is the advertisements plastered on the subway and the pop-up ads that appear in your browser.

Situationists

What do situationists want and do? What defines them?

Dérives and Psychogeography

Psychogeography, writing over and editing existing maps and making their own maps, based on Dérives. Wandering around without a destination, (lummelen) in the hope of discovering new unknown spaces, but also just for the sake of wandering itself.

They are an anti-capitalist movement, a group of people that wants to play. Situationists want to live like homo ludens: The playing human.

Detournement

Detournement means retouring, hijacking in French. What do situationist mean by play?

4 types of play

Johan Huizinga wrote a book in which he explains the 4 types of play: Agon, Alea, Mimicry and Ilynx.

Funnily enough Huizinga doesn’t mention music as a form of play in his book. Which is strange in my opinion. Other play theorists do. To summarize; most play theorists touch upon play in the forms of art, sports, games, philosophy and poetry, and roleplay.

Commodity fetishism

The feeling that purchased goods will ultimately make us happy and will give us magic powers (figure of speech) or somehow create our personality. We are certain these goods will make us more attractive to potential partners, make us appear “cooler” “better” “richer”.

How can I become “homo ludens” (a playing human)?

I think the closest we have all come to homo ludens or some form of it is the period in which everyone and their mom was playing pokemon go. I know this subject has been touched upon but I think it is still very relevant to discuss. If you think about play, the first thing that comes to mind is children and our childhood. But play doesn’t need to be “childish” perse. The mayority of people see LARP as very childish. But people who larp probably get as close to homo ludens as the situationists first imagined it.

Game culture

Gamers and game culture also finds itself in that realm. Although with the rise of gaming youtubers and events like E-sports. These gamers do gain a profit from their gaming. Technically these individuals don’t count, as play theorists say play should be about play alone and not about profit or gain. There is a lot of money in gaming competitions, more so than gaming youtube. But gaming youtubers do gain popularity and internet fame from their youtube channels.

Pokemon go

But what about that time when kijkduin was the pokemon-go capital of the world? I have been there when the pokemon go craze was new and fresh. In my hometown I saw my neighbours walking one specific street at night to visit every poke-stop. This particular street is very interesting because it has a statue every few meters. Every statue is a poke stop. The people that live in this street could probably access a poke-stop from their bedrooms.

You can say pokemon go stimulates people to go on derives, but that is not entirely true. Instead of wandering around and looking at the scenery and discovering new spaces, these people only stare at their device (if they have the augmented reality option turned off). The people in my hometown were just going back and forth walking the street they themselves live at, to return to their bedrooms after a few rounds.

Cosplay, drag and LARP

Maybe larping or cosplay is the most true way of living like homo ludens. Although popular cosplayers do gain popularity and social gain online, amature cosplayers don’t gain much. While cosplay is not the most popular or socially acceptable form of play among society it is considered cool in certain communities.

My brain also shifts to Drag. Can drag be the answer to my question? Drag lately is popularized by tv shows like Rupauls drag race (multiple emmy award winning reality tv show). And more and more drag performers are starting to gain a profit from their art.

The best solution might be larp. While cosplay and drag are becoming more and more trendy and accepted, LArp is still seen as childish among most people.

Not many people gain anything from LARP (to my knowledge) and it is not as much of a spectacular spectacle as being a drag performer. Which is (in some forms of drag) heavily dependent on pop culture and social media. This logic could also be applied to cosplay.

I decided to look up a specific definition of LARP:

“A live action role-playing game (LARP) is a form of role-playing game where the participants physically portray their characters. The players pursue goals within a fictional setting represented by the real world while interacting with each other in character.”

I based this first draft on the theory around the book homo ludens, by Johan Huizinga. While not knowing a lot about this book or Johan Huizinga. 

The aesthetic reference I used for this essay draft is the pokémon go app.

In this draft I also include topics as: gaming culture, cosplay, drag and LARP.

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Forming groups

After we made the booklet in marks class I formed a group of 4 with Mia, Isabelle, and Ralf. With the overarching topic of our interest being “meme culture”. We named our team “the meme-team”

These are the images that I put in my booklet:

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Final virtual dérive

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Mark workshop #2

In this workshop the students printed out images of spectacles and we made collages with them. Unfortunately I lost the collages I made that day, but I recreated them in photoshop. 

This second collage is meant to critique black pete (zwarte piet) not to encourage or support black pete (zwarte piet). 

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Mark workshop #1

Recreating an image in the photostudio 

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Database

After the first lesson with Mark I collected a lot of images that have to do with racism and cultural appropriation, and put them in the database.

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Mark lesson 1

This is the image that I got from the random picking. I already knew a lot about this picture. I connected this “copy” to the “original” which in this case is the phenomenon blackface. So I connected the gucci-sweater to the racist character “black sambo” from the black sambo books. 

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Theory: The society of the spectacle

After the first theory lesson with Dirk we had to read passages from the society of the spectacle and pick a favorite lemma. These are the lemma’s that I read that first week.

CHAPTER 1  The Culmination of Separation

1 In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation.

2 The images detached from every aspect of life merge into a common stream in which the unity of that life can no longer be recovered. Fragmented views of reality regroup themselves into a new unity as a separate pseudoworld that can only be looked at. The specialization of images of the world evolves into a world of autonomized images where even the deceivers are deceived. The spectacle is a concrete inversion of life, an autonomous movement of the nonliving.

3 The spectacle presents itself simultaneously as society itself, as a part of society, and as a means of unification. As a part of society, it is the focal point of all vision and all consciousness. But due to the very fact that this sector is separate, it is in reality the domain of delusion and false consciousness: the unification it achieves is nothing but an official language of universal separation.

4 The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images.

5 The spectacle cannot be understood as a mere visual excess produced by mass-media technologies. It is a worldview that has actually been materialized, a view of a world that has become objective.

6 Understood in its totality, the spectacle is both the result and the project of the dominant mode of production. It is not a mere decoration added to the real world. It is the very heart of this real society’s unreality. In all of its particular manifestations — news, propaganda, advertising, entertainment — the spectacle represents the dominant model of life. It is the omnipresent affirmation of the choices that have already been made in the sphere of production and in the consumption implied by that production. In both form and content the spectacle serves as a total justification of the conditions and goals of the existing system. The spectacle also represents the constant presence of this justification since it monopolizes the majority of the time spent outside the production process.

CHAPTER 7  Territorial domination

165 Capitalist production has unified space, breaking down the boundaries between one society and the next. This unification is at the same time an extensive and intensive process of banalization. Just as the accumulation of commodities mass-produced for the abstract space of the market shattered all regional and legal barriers and all the Medieval guild restrictions that maintained the quality of craft production, it also undermined the autonomy and quality of places. This homogenizing power is the heavy artillery that has battered down all the walls of China.

166 The free space of commodities is constantly being altered and redesigned in order to become ever more identical to itself, to get as close as possible to motionless monotony.

167 While eliminating geographical distance, this society produces a new internal distance in the form of spectacular separation.

168 Tourism — human circulation packaged for consumption, a by-product of the circulation of commodities — is the opportunity to go and see what has been banalized. The economic organization of travel to different places already guarantees their equivalence. The modernization that has eliminated the time involved in travel has simultaneously eliminated any real space from it.

169 The society that reshapes its entire surroundings has evolved its own special technique for molding its own territory, which constitutes the material underpinning for all the facets of this project. Urbanism — “city planning” — is capitalism’s method for taking over the natural and human environment. Following its logical development toward total domination, capitalism now can and must refashion the totality of space into its own particular décor

170 The capitalist need that is satisfied by urbanism’s conspicuous petrification of life can be described in Hegelian terms as a total predominance of a “peaceful coexistence within space” over “the restless becoming that takes place in the progression of time.”

171 While all the technical forces of capitalism contribute toward various forms of separation, urbanism provides the material foundation for those forces and prepares the ground for their deployment. It is the very technology of separation.

173 In all previous periods architectural innovations were designed exclusively for the ruling classes. Now for the first time a new architecture has been specifically designed for the poor. The aesthetic poverty and vast proliferation of this new experience in habitation stem from its 64 mass character, which character in turn stems both from its function and from the modern conditions of construction. The obvious core of these conditions is the authoritarian decisionmaking which abstractly converts the environment into an environment of abstraction. The same architecture appears everywhere as soon as industrialization has begun, even in the countries that are furthest behind in this regard, as an essential foundation for implanting the new type of social existence. The contradiction between the growth of society’s material powers and the continued lack of progress toward any conscious control of those powers is revealed as glaringly by the developments of urbanism as by the issues of thermonuclear weapons or of birth control (where the possibility of manipulating heredity is already on the horizon).

I selected #173 as my favorite lemma.

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Spectacles in the city

For inspiration and for research I collected some inspiration images for spectacles in the city.