To Create a larp is to Design an Activity
Posted 2012-02-09 - Archived under: activity, convention, design, experience, larp, presentation, Prolog - Reply
I presented some of my thoughts on how to design larps in th larp-convention Prolog a couple of days ago. I promised the participants to publish my slides, and here they are. I’ve just moved them into the web without redesigning them, meaning some of the translation doesn’t work perfectly, especially ther seem to be a lot of whitespace missing, but I think you’ll survive anyway :-)
Oh, and it’s in Swedish…
Prolog Making a LARP is to Design ans Activity (to create an Experience)
Staging Illusions, London and Busking (mostly the first one)
Posted 2011-12-12 - Archived under: conference, critical game, dark rides, design, game design, game designers, magic effects, peppers ghost, phantasmagoria, plans, show, Staging Illusions - Reply
I came back from the Staging Illusions Conference yesterday. The conference was Thursday – Friday but I stayed in London looking at busking spots for the project in the spring. Not that many buskers out of course (wrong time of the year), but I got to see the three main spots at Covent Garden and the one at London Eye and found some action at Picadilly Circus. Also I found the time for a lunch with Andrew Sheerin (one of the designers of War on Terror: the Boardgame) and some discussions on his network for critical game designers. The plans are still quite young, but could turn into something fruitful. Keep me up to date Andrew!
Staging Illusions
A two day, yearly, conference on staging illusions. Mostly people from culture, media and gender studies, also some historians and some with a bit of a technical background. And quite many practicing magicians, nice! This is not really my field, but it was a great way to broaden my mind and find new angles on what I’m doing. If I should really distil the main content from the conference I would say Vanessa Toulmin’s keynote gave a good overview, from pantasmagoria and Peppers ghost to George Méliès movies and Dark Rides.
Other talks I found interesting was:
Jacquelin Hylkema’s speech on history and how the public focus changed from the deciever to the victim around the change of the century 1800 – 1900.
Max Schneider‘s overview of directing miracles and magic effects. Mainly the three roles of a magician:
- Playing the magician, a superior being, an alpha male.
- Magician playing a role, in a story.
- Magic in a play, without one clear magician
Also the split into three types of magicians is interesting:
- Killer
- Victim
- Witness
Kate Genevieve presented “Give me your hand” where the participant is blinded, but with a video showing the surroundings. This builds upon the idea of relating to a rubber hand if you treat it the same way as your real hand (Google it).
Jon Armstrong presented his idea of magic in theatre performance. He’s got a different vocabulary but a lot of thought connect well to what I’m thinking, and especially to the project I call ‘Spooks’ (yes, I’m talking to you Arkadia).
Adam Bee presented an art project called Telekinesis, this I need to delve deeper int before i give my judgement :-)
Astrid Enslin had a lot of good ideas around metalepsis as a transmedia phenomenon. How levels of story collide and different ways of looking at it. There was a lot of good references and I need to look more closely at her work in the future. Among other things she compared:
- Mimesis, the illusion of experience reality (Plato, Aristotel, Averbach, Ricouéur, Genette, Wolf)
- Fourth wall (Diderot, Auter & Davis)
- Willing suspension of disbelief (Coleridge, Ferri)
- Immersion (Murray, Marinelli, Salen & Zimmermann, Boellstorff)
Also there were some talk around Bergson’s intuitive method that was quite interesting
Pyramids 2 Pancakes
Posted 2011-11-22 - Archived under: design, feminism, gender equality, new economy, organisation, rant, social innovation - Reply
I don’t really have the time right now to write a full post, but this is good and I want to spread it, so here’s a short, and not that well thought through rant: It’s about the new economy, the role of design and the consumer as producer. But, even though she doesn’t really say it directly, it’s also about feminism and the overthrowing of an old system that gave power to the people already in power. Looking at feminism from that perspective turns it into more than gender equality. uit’s about equal power, it’s about ‘we are the 99%’. And yes, I may be putting more words in there than she would admit or agree upon. I’ll just put a quote here, hope you’ll take 15 minutes to watch it, and decide for yourselves :
Josephine Green talks about the change of age from one way of thinking, of being and of doing in the world to another and the challenges in the 21st century. She explores social innovation, the decentralization and distribution of creativity and capacity through the system and stimulates thinking and insights around the future of innovation and design.
If you’re more interested check: Pyramids 2 Pancakes (I haven’t really had the time to read through it myself yet)
