Article Inspiration - From monologue to dialogue: towards playable cities, Dr Steven Conway12/24/2019 It’s been a year of deep thinking around play in museums. I adore the concept of playful interactions; bringing joy and wonderment (often with a sneaky side serve of history) to visitors. I personally love finding spaces that encourage me to play inside them; from chasing butterflies across an interactive wall to bumbling my way around puzzle rooms. I stumbled across Dr Conway’s article this week, and I just wanted to share it immediately. “From monologue to dialogue: towards playable cities” explores some of the differences between games such as PokemonGo and Hello Lamp Post. PokemonGo has become a point of irritation for me. I have watched what I thought was going to transform the way people played in a landscape instead became dominant over the space. The first few weeks included me running into strangers and chatting about how to find critters. That atmosphere kind of died in Australia, although I believe that it has remained active in some locations. From the incorrect descriptions of places loaded into the app itself to the way the people treated the spaces that the game used (such as leaving trash in droves as everyone rushes to catch something exciting in a particular place), it’s just kind of disappointing. Conway sees this as a monologue, where the game is “forcing the player to stare at the screen and listen to the designer as they demand the player go here or there, ignorant of the unique experiences each city affords”.
The example of Hello Lamp Post looks fantastic though! Designed by Pan Studios and commissioned by the City of Austin, players interact with the landscape by literally saying hello to it. Using their phone, players would find a code on something in the streetscape (like a Lamp Post) and text a message using that code. The object would come to life, sending a text message back to the player talking about others they had spoken to and the things going on around it. It’s playful, joyful and just lovely. The landscape is part of the game, and the player is asked to interact with the landscape directly. The landscape is the main character, not a background. Hello Lamp Post reminded me of a podcast I enjoy called Everything is Alive, by Ian Chillag, which interviews everyday objects as if they were alive.It also made me think about the surprise and amusement that I had in Melbourne last year, finding the street art by Astral Nadir. The artworks are what I would describe as arcane. Odd little designs that had me wondering whether I had found art or a cult waiting to feed me to Cthulhu. Popping down alleyways, staring at walls, trying to put the puzzle pieces together; it was utterly delightful. The article has made me look around my city, and think about how I could use some spaces differently. Not just using spaces to force interaction with a phone game, but how to bring life and joy into the areas. With fear of sounding jingoistic, it about activating a space meaningfully and with the intent of interaction from the people there.
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Museum working, game playing and dog loving geek. Tune in for musings about the GLAM sector, and generally geekiness.
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