Homo Ludens Ludens - Play in contemporary culture and society
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Homo Ludens Ludens is the last episode of a trilogy that LABoral is dedicating to the world of game. Following Gameworld and Playware, HLL explores play as a key element of today' s world, highlighting its necessity for our contemporary societies. There are more than 30 works on show, so you can expect several installments about Homo Ludens Ludens. The title of the show, Homo Ludens Ludens , alludes to the taxonomy of human evolution. The human being used to be regarded as a Homo faber (man the smith or man the maker in latin) for the control they could exert on the environment through tools.
In 1938, however, Dutch historian Johan Huizinga introduced the idea that man is also an Homo Ludens (a "playing man"), a man for whom amusements, humour and leisure played an important role in both culture and society. Philosopher Vilém Flusser went further. For him, we are living in a society which, instead of working, generates information by playing with a technical apparatus, implying a transition from the myth of the creator towards a player. Playing can therefore be regarded as an act of emancipation. The exhibition speculates on the emergence of a Homo Ludens Ludens - the contemporary player of games.
Among the many installations and documentaries i was really looking forward to see at LABoral was Bagatelle Concrete which Martin Pichlmair had mentioned a while ago in an interview i had with him. Martin teamed up with Viennese artist and researcher Fares Kayali to turn a pinball machine from the '70s into a musical instrument and, as he explained me at the time, The piece is a pinball machine that constructs music. It samples itself and manipulates those samples according to how you play pinball on it. We removed all competitive and all decorative elements of the pinball game and put digital electronics into this analogue electro-mechanical machine. While the gameplay is technically unaltered - all the bumpers and traps are still in place - the effect of playing is a composition instead of a highscore.
The more successfully the player interacts with the machine, the more intense the accompanying soundtrack gets. The piece maintains the roughness of the electromechanical original game, mixing physical sounds happening on the playing field with manipulations of their recordings. A post written by Nicolas Nova a few days ago brought to my mind what Martin told me in Gijon when i was complaining that that damn pinball was way too difficult to play for me. Apparently the artists had to dumb down the machine. They bought it on eBay, not knowing that the '70s model was manufactured at a time when pinballs were extremely popular and the models issued had thus to be quite high level to keep players interested.
Concrète references musique concrète and bagatelle alludes to the history of pinball games. Bagatelle was an ancestor of modern pinball. Created in France for King louis XVI, it looked like a narrowed billiard table. The aim of the game was to get 9 balls past pins (which act as obstacles) into holes.
Julian Oliver is participating to the show with an improved version of levelHead, the 3D memory game became an instant youtube and blog hit the moment it hit the online turf. The installation which uses physical cubes as its only interface is totally engrossing and nerve-challenging. On screen it appears that each of the cube's faces contains a little room and each of them is logically connected with the others by doors. In one of these rooms there is a character and by tilting the cube the player directs this character from room to room in an effort to find the way out. Some doors lead nowhere and will send the character back to the room they started in. levelHead challenges the player's spatial memory. Each player has 120 seconds to find the exit of each cube and move the character to the next. There are three cubes (levels) in total and, the mnemonic traps become increasingly difficult to avoid as the player progresses. Video: The game refers to one of the earliest memory systems which consisted in constructing imaginary architectures (memory loci) designed specifically for the purpose of storing information such that it could be retrieved by 'walking through' the building in the mind. Today, domestic printers, digital tagging systems, address books and journals (on and offline) do the storage and indexing of information in exterior locations like remote databases or local file systems. Similarly, navigating in the real world increasingly tends toward dependence on external media and locative technologies. With levelHead, moving from one site to another produces an imaginary architecture and positions this memory architecture as the primary means of navigation. Only one side of the cube will reveal a room at any given time and so a memory of the last room - of the positions of entrances and exits, stairs and other features - is necessary to proceed logically to the next movement.
The tangible interface aspect is integral to the function of recall. As the cube is turned by the hands in search of correctly adjoining rooms muscle-memory is engaged and, as such, aids the memory as a felt memory of patterns of turns: "that room is two turns to the left when this room is upside down".
With their Massage me jackets, Hannah Perner-Wilson & Mika Satomi allow massage to enter the video game realm. The jacket is the joystick. By massaging more or less vigourously the back of a volunteer you get to control a fighting avatar. I had fun playing both roles. Being the passive massaged one is extremely relaxing as the designers had spread and repeated the commands all over the back of the jacket, focusing on the areas most likely to beg for a good rub. Now remembering where to massage in order to have your avatar jump or kick requires some practice but playing randomly will not necessarily prevent you from winning the battle.
I'm afraid the best piece of the exhibition for me was William Wegman's Two Dogs and Ball (Dogs Duet). Wegman has always been a favorite of mine (has someone else seen the Deodorant video? It shows him spraying his armpit with an aerosol deodorant until the can is empty, while giving a deadpan testimonial: "It feels real nice going on, and smells good, and keeps me dry all day.")
In Two Dogs and a Ball, Wegman's Weimaraner Man Ray and his companion are mesmerized by a tennis ball which moves off screen. Wegman explained that all he had to do to obtain the comic effect was to move a tennis ball around, off-camera, thus capturing the dogs' attention. During the press conference, Laura Baigorri --one of the curators-- explained that Wegman's video has been selected as an example of how the avant-gardes of the 20th century had introduced an element of play in the artistic practice. The video is on ubuweb.
My flickr set. Also part of the Homo Ludens Ludens exhibition: Art of War and El Burbujometro. |
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That Wegman film is great...it's even better for the YouTube vid of British Shorthair kittens dancing to a Crusha tv ad, done with a similar method, that's been popular recently: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gY0MSuyaKMk
Thanks for the write-up of this, which I would have liked to have gone to. What seems missing for me with all of the works is the lack of integration with daily life.
That these playful things are so distinctly separated, mostly as artworks, reinforces the homo faber/homo ludens split rather than attempting to integrate or dissolve that (in my view, artificial and detrimental) distinction.
I can't help feeling that game theory and game art or art games aren't terribly good vehicles for the kind of re-framing of play they're claiming to want to do. Art, in particular, makes a point of being other and separate. A pinball machine as a musical instrument is a cute idea, but it still remains a thing you go to see and use in your 'playtime' outside of work.
Was there/is there anything there that addresses this separation?
Hi Andy,
that's a good point.
the full list of works is here
http://www.laboralcentrodearte.org/en/412-works
the show closes in september so you could still fly to asturias and see it for yourself.
i found that John-paul bichard's video installation showed quite well how moments of life (though not exactly everyday life) can be lived and perceived as a game. The Duellists is a great example of everyday architecture used as playground,
while the documentary on Gold Farming demonstrated how new forms of labors get embodied into play.
the pinball machine project was interesting for the way it added a new playful element to an object which already has play for sole purpose
but mmmh! i'm never sure about the best way to respond to the questions and expectations of a designer who comments on art. i don't distinguish art and its impact from everyday life as you might do. i often find that i bring art back home with me after i've left a good show. in some cases, art has changed my perspective and everyday actions more than i would have expected. it's true that some forms of art make a point of being other and separate but thank god, thank duchamp and thank to all the activists slash artists out there, not all of them distinguish life from art.
i'm not sure i saw anything there that addressed as such the separation you mention. one of the reason for that was probably that the show focused on several themes (more detail on this on a future post) and didn't ambition to encompass the whole "play" spectrum.
i don't know if i provided you with a satisfying answer? too bad i had to leave before the conference which immediately followed the opening. no doubt there were some answers to your queries there. but hey, that gives me an idea.... i can always forward your question to the curators and ask them to give their view on it, right?
r
@Andy
There were several works there that sought to address this supposed divide directly. Adding to those mentioned by Regine above are: Ludic Society's Objects of Desire, Gordan Savicic Constraint City, Silver and True's SellYourRolex
Naturally by being in a gallery, these works primarily existed as documents of their transformative potential, a potential primarily intended for the street - 'daily life' as you call it.
Anyway, I don't think this is at all bad. The gallery is already part of daily life, how can it possibly be separate? We have many 'daily lives', whether that be milking goats, playing Wii Sports, driving a cab or reading Pynchon.
Moreso, I'm suspicious of the idea that contemporary art has an obligation to so-called 'daily life', let alone games. Where does this come from, guilty bourgeois compensation for its own lofty, abstract preoccupations? Art and games are already part of life.. All we can talk about are differences in topic, differences in use context.
Anyway, I think the curators were perfectly aware of these questions, even strategically so.
Worth mentioning also that the Situationist's work on life-play featured highly in the Symposium element of Homo Ludens Ludens..
Cheers
Regine/Julian,
Thanks for the responses. I should perhaps have defined daily life more. My intention was inclusive of 'working life' as much as any other activity (i.e., 'the street'). I picked up on it because the exhibition description says:
"The exhibition and conference can be understood as an examination of play as a vital element in our everyday life and as a speculation on the emergence of a Homo Ludens Ludens – the contemporary player of games."
I don't agree that galleries are part of daily life, not for many, many people at least and certainly not everyday life. They tend to make a point of being very distinct from daily life. After all, everything from the hallowed white box to disruptive performance is about making that distinction.
This divide is more than just supposed, it exists. If we're going to invoke Huizinga (and we may as well bring in Caillois and Sutton-Smith, whilst we're at it), we need to recognise that, for them, this separation is one of the defining aspects of play, i.e., it has a special place (a playing field) and special rules that are separate from everyday life.
In this sense, integrating play into everyday life isn't an easy task because you risk destroying the very thing that makes play what it is. I guess that's why I was asking about the exhibition's success in this regard and suggesting that a gallery environment doesn't lend itself to that integration.
For the record, I don't really consider myself either/or in terms of being a designer or an artist. Most of the time I'm a blend of the two and I tend not to make the distinction.
hola Andy,
apologies for the misunderstanding. of course, it would be naive of me to believe that everyone goes to the museum and to art galleries. that's my job to do it and i know that it is also a luxury (at least for people interested in art). i only spoke about myself in the previous comment because speaking of myself is probably what i do best. but i will repeat that there are plenty of artists and art associations who have learned to bypass the white box and get their work right in the middle of the crowd (the yes men, brandon ballengee, the institute for applied autonomy, most street artists, etc.) and some (in particular the center for tactical magic) do it in a very playful way.
to get back to the exhibition itself and to its description, it states that HLL "examines" play in everyday life and i can't see what should prevent an art space to explore daily life. their purpose is not to "integrate" play in life (they know that it would be questionable too) but to presents artists' observations and ideas on the topic. maybe i'd better shut up here. i interviewed one of the curators and will publish our discussion soon so hopefully the lovely smart Daphne will have some answers there to your questions
I think I've probably just seen one too many lame art games in galleries and am jaded (in that Antirom way you know and love)!
Some of the nicest, playful stuff I've seen recently was pretty simple. The enormous street toys that Doma, from Argentina, made: http://www.doma.tv
i see what you mean too well. i must add that i'm getting jaded as well.