Javier Lloret - Draft

Abstract

Pervasive games redefine our relationship with the physical environment integrating play into urban space. In this draft I introduce the characteristics of pervasive games and study how they are related with the Situationism and with Aldo Van Eyck playgrounds.

Draft

According to Bo Kampmann Walther (Space, time, play) “it is characteristic of pervasive games that they expand the gaming space, often by reconfiguring the social landscape of cities into a dense grid of game objects, game goals and game worlds, thus obscuring the demarcations between the real and the virtual. Pervasive games play with these demarcations.” Pervasive games extend gaming experiences out into the physical world for a more embodied game practice.

The properties of pervasive games influenced Jane McGonigal, game designer and researcher specialized in pervasive games, to try find a connection with the ideas and practice of the Situationist International.

Situationist International (1957 to 1972) was a group of european revolutionaries with their ideas influenced by 20th century European artistic avant-gardes and marxism. They promote experiences of life, situations, in urban spaces which disrupted the ordinary and normal in order to jolt people out of their customary ways of thinking and acting.

“Due too its marginal existence in relation to the oppressive reality of work, play is often regarded as fictitious. But the work of the situationists is precisely the preparation of ludic possibilities to come.” Guy Debord, “Contribution to a Situationist definition of play”, 1958.

Aldo Van Eyck (1918-1999) was a Dutch architect, member of the Team 10 organization, that shared some ideas with the Situationists. Between 1947 and 1978 Van Eyck designed more than 700 playgrounds for the city of Amsterdam. With these playgrounds he transformed pieces of ground that were not used into active urban elements where kids and adults could play, meet up, interact.

Situationist International Situationist International (1957 to 1972) was a group of european revolutionaries with their ideas influenced by 20th century European artistic avant-gardes and marxism.

Through techniques that they developed like dérive (the urban flow of acts and encounters) and détournement (rerouting of events and images) they promote experiences of life, situations, in urban spaces which disrupted the ordinary and normal in order to jolt people out of their customary ways of thinking and acting.

Draft 2

Rubik’s Facade and pervasive games

Pervasive games extend gaming experiences out into the physical world for a more embodied game practice. According to Bo Kampmann Walther (Space, time, play) “it is characteristic of pervasive games that they expand the gaming space, often by reconfiguring the social landscape of cities into a dense grid of game objects, game goals and game worlds, thus obscuring the demarcations between the real and the virtual. Pervasive games play with these demarcations.”

Reading these characteristics we could include Rubik’s Facade into the pervasive games field. It transforms urban space for creating a playful experience. The user interacts with the physical interface-cube to solve the puzzle in the architecture of the city, playing with those demarcations between the real and the virtual..

Many theorists and researchers (Gold, J. McGonigal, D. Diaz) have made connections between the ideas and practice of the Situationist International and pervasive games. Some of them quoted the text “Contribution to a Situationist definition of play” that Guy Debord, leader of Situationist International, wrote in 1958 : “Due too its marginal existence in relation to the oppressive reality of work, play is often regarded as fictitious. But the work of the situationists is precisely the preparation of ludic possibilities to come.”

The situanionists, through those experiments in urban spaces were trying to break the ordinary way of acting.

Situations and spectacle

But it doesn’t feel right to make that connections between the ideas of the situationists and pervasive games and don’t talk also about some confilcts.

“In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of “spectacles”. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into representation.” Guy Debord, The society of the spectacle.

Debord defined spectacle as “a separe pseudoworld that can only be looked at”.

Hybrid space

Aldo Van Eyck (1918-1999) was a Dutch architect, member of the Team 10 organization, that shared some ideas with the Situationists. Between 1947 and 1978 Van Eyck designed more than 700 playgrounds for the city of Amsterdam. With these playgrounds he transformed pieces of ground that were not used into active urban elements where kids and adults could play, meet up, interact.

Bibliography

The Situationist City. Simon Sadler(1999)
Space Time Play: Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: The Next Level. Friedrich von Borries (2007)
This might be a game. Ubiquitous play and performance at the turn of the twenty-first century. Jane McGonigal (2006)
From the square to the chat: analysis of the transformations of public space from the neomedial artistic practice. Diego Diaz (2007)