The Dead Bug Funeral Kit

As anybody who's ever played Cowboys and Indians can tell you, death and dying are very much part of the fun. Of course, it's the pretending that keeps the game fun.

The Dead Bug Funeral Kit gives us a way to play with things like death and dying that aren't totally pretend. Like the death of a pet bug.

Clearly, the idea of having a pet bug, let alone burying one, is one that would occur only to the young and the chosen few. It's a bit silly. And paying $25 (plus shipping) for a Dead Bug Funeral Kit is therefore even sillier.

The kit takes itself very seriously, presenting the minor mourner with a "compleat" set of attractively tasteful funereal accoutrements: Buggy Book of Eulogies with Ribbon Bookmark, Casket, Grave Marker, White Clay Flower, Burial Scroll, and Pouch of Grass Seed - all packaged in a somberly suitable metal box.

It's this very completeness and attention to detail that makes the Dead Bug Funeral Kit so much fun - fun enough to let us play, in a hauntingly real way, with things as serious as death and grieving.

moovl

moovl is a product of the people who make the Major FUN Award-winning Soda Constructor (reviewed in this issue of the FunDay Times). Which might explain why it's such a fascinating, inviting, and playworthy drawing toy.

The big fascination comes from getting to draw things that: a) move and b) interact. I'm not sure which, a or b, contributes more to the fun. Having them both together, and being able to change the drawings, and how they move, and how they are influenced by the mysterious physics of gravity and friction and stiffness - each and all contribute to moving moovl funwards.

In the words of the Soda people themselves: "Moovl imbues freehand-drawings with life-like simulated dynamics and programmable behaviours. This dynamic transformation places drawing in a highly motivating self-directed feedback process of cause and effect, experiment and discovery."

In other words: moovl is fun. Like I said, it's: "a fascinating, inviting, and playworthy drawing toy." Online. Advertisement free.

Human Pacman

It's a project of the Mixed Reality Lab of the National University of Singapore. It's called "Human Pac Man." And, by golly, Human Pac Man it is: complete with back pack computers, VR gloves and goggles!

There's something even more than wonderful about this - this extraordinarily high-tech research dedicated to the pursuit of a living Pacman game. I quote: "Permeation of technology into everyday life is made easier when the human experience it creates is made associable with day-to-day encounters. Human Pacman, based on the popular arcade Pacman from the 1980s, is a novel and entertaining game which seeks to bring about such association through stimulating multiple human senses and perception. It is a real-world-physical, social, and wide area mobile entertainment system that is built upon the concepts of ubiquitous computing, tangible human-computer interaction, and wide-area entertainment networks. Human Pacman is pioneering a new form of gaming that anchors on physicality, mobility, social interaction, and ubiquitous computing."

Ah, so it's not just for fun. I see. Research. Exploring the outer fringes of Human/Computer Interface. Yeah. That's what it is. Not just fun. An investigation in how to create more.

Puzzles, Art, and Interactivity

Samorost is a fun example of what one might call "Interactive Puzzles." After an introductory animation (during which you can't do anything other than watch), you find yourself in a strange world. Clicking on different things make different other things happen. Eventually, you discover that if you click on the right things, the "hero" manages to escape that world into another. It's essentially a kind of puzzle. The only way to solve it is through trial, error, and careful observation.

In a way, this has been true of almost every videogame you can think of. From Space Invaders to Myst.

I've been writing about an emerging form of web-based Interactive Art, as represented by the work of people like poet Jim Andrews and the artist Stanza." Here, the art can only be experienced by interacting with it. Not just viewing it, but actually playing with it.

I found a paper written on this subject almost ten years ago, called "The History of the Interface in Interactive Art." Though technology has progressed far beyond that described in the paper, it presents some powerful insights about this art/play form, not only as it appears on the web, but also as it permeates our museums.

Ten Days in Africa

Ten Days in Africa is an innovative game of strategy and luck for 2-4 players. Definitely strategic, with enough luck to keep the game surprisingly fun.

Like Hasbro's RackO, the object is to put ten randomly selected cards into some sort of sequence. You fill the wooden card holders with cards one at a time. Once a card is placed, it can't be moved - only exchanged with a card from the deck or one of three discard piles. Unlike RackO, the sequence is topological, rather than numerical. A win depicts a path, by foot, car, and/or plane, that leads from country to country to country, spanning all ten cards.

At first, we found ourselves thinking more than we really had to, so playing time for the four of us was more than an hour. The rules are a paragon of brevity and elegance, but it took a while to gain a proper appreciation for the geopolitical innuendos of the African continent. And it took another while to understand the implications of the different modes of travel. Or the significance of the three, face-up discard piles and the strategic covering up or revealing of the cards thereupon.

It's a learning that is easily curved by playing. Just make the first game not count. Consider it an opportunity to play with a set of wonderfully thick little cards that fit everso handsomely into their wooden card holders; a chance to get a bit more familiar with the geopolitics of Africa; a learning experience. A learning-geography-like learning experience, as a matter of fact. As a matter of fact, the most fun I've ever had learning geography. Even though the map could have really been a map of anywhere. In fact, maybe precisely because the map could have been a map of everywhere. Which probably explains why you might also consider buying Ten Days in the USA, or, for that matter, Ten Days Almost Anywhere - the Paris Metro, perhaps? Downtown Kabul?

As we were finishing the first round of the game, one veteran Games Taster said: "let's remember this experience. It's a benchmark for the kind of excellence the Major FUN Award represents."

The History of Eating Utensils

Sometimes, an historical perspective can reveal the sense of play inherent in even the most commonplace objects. Such is the case in a collection called "The History of Eating Utensils." Seeing how a simple object like a spoon has evolved over time, and from culture to culture, reveals the play between fun and function. Apparently, spoons have been made of shell and wood, gold, silver, and pewter), ivory, bone, horn, pottery, porcelain, and crystal. And the shape has varied as much as the material.

I found the collection of Portable Eating Utensils the most fun, because it expanded my understanding of what an eating utensil can be.

The collection, known as the "Riez Food Technology Collection," is housed at the Anthropology Department at the California Academy of Sciences.


"The Anthropology Department at the California Academy of Sciences houses the Rietz Food Technology Collection. Containing approximately 1,300 items, this collection was assembled by Carl Austin Rietz, an inventor and businessman in the food industry...The variety of forms displayed by many items in the Rietz Collection document the history and evolution of such common utensils as forks, knives, spoons, and chopsticks."

Paper Plate Origami

Paper Plate Origami - the whole notion sounds a little, well, silly. I guess because anything made out of paper plates has a certain silly ambiance to it. Paper plates, after all, are, well, not the stuff of art as we know it. At least, not until we discover the work and passion of mathematician Bradford Hansen-Smith, whose site, called "Wholemovement," is called Wholemovement because, as Hansen-Smith explains, "... is the comprehensive understanding of the word geometry. Geometry is defined as earth measure, the measure of things of the earth. Geo means earth. The earth is spherical. The sphere is the only form we know that is inherently Whole. Measure is about movement. Wholemovement is the movement of the whole to itself."

This is deep stuff. It is also beautiful. And, most importantly, it is a gateway to yet more fun. Though Hansen-Smith doesn't use the "F" word (fun), a casual click through his gallery reveals his deepest secret. Making all these amazing shapes out of paper plates is, despite the claims of geometric significance, great fun.

I especially enjoyed his introduction to his links section, in which he reveals both his fascination with and his enjoyment of all things geometrical:

"...And so it is with geometry; the movement of pushing and pulling, stretching, compressing , loud and soft, density and openness, folding into to and out of spatial arrangements and proportional relationships gives meaning that reveals value. In the movement from one model to another is where we find understanding. "

The Museum of Burnt Food

The Museum of Burnt Food is, as advertised, a museum of food that has been, well, burnt. I quote:

"The muse of the culinarily overzealous, food suffers silently throughout the most rigorous ministrations. This exhibit dramatically illustrates the extent to which food must suffer for our art. One look at the size of the toast AFTER it has undergone its MBF transformation shows just how much the toast itself has put into that most awesome metamorphosis. Let's hear it for the effort of the art itself, not just the artist!"

Also displayed in this most significantly burnt collection: quiche, an orange, a potato, pizza toast, soy hot dogs, a lemon, a tomato, apple cider residue in a frying pan, a bagel, a plastic tumbler (not food, but clearly food-related) and a shrimp-kebab.

Reading on, we learn that: "Deborah Henson-Conant is the curator of (and founder and primary contributor to) the Burnt Food Museum. The museum is housed in Arlington, Massachusetts, but is temporarily closed due to fire damage."

Yes, yes, it is another website to be filed under irreconcilablee Silliness," yet at the same time it documents what a gift playfulness is in that it can so successfully transform the somewhat tragic into the genuinely comic.

Business Card Cubes

In answer to the question "what can I do with old business cards," artist and blogger Ned Batchelder has arrived at a most constructive response: "make cubes out of them."

It turns out that with six business cards, five minutes, and some significant dexterity, you can actually make something satisfactorily cube-like. You can also attach two cubes together, to which you can attach yet more cubes. And, should you manage to collect 66,048 business cards (you might need to make this a staff project), you can make a Depth 3 Menger's Sponge. Batchelder explains: "The depth 0 sponge is a single business card cube. When made from standard American business cards, it measures 2" x 2" x 2". The depth 1 sponge measures 6" x 6" x 6", the depth 2 sponge measures 18" x 18" x 18", and the depth 3 sponge measures 54" x 54" x 54", or 4.5 feet or 1.37 meters on a side... By the way, a level 4 sponge would require almost a million cards and weigh over a ton. I do not believe it could support its own weight. So level 3 is the biggest sponge we can hope to build."

Bless you, Ned Batchelder. Your playfulness and passion for the non-essential makes the world a better place.

Cat Dancing

The World of Dancing Cats is actually quite serious about the whole dancing-with-cats thing.

In An Exhibition of Cat Dance Photographs, one of the exhibitors, Judith Pettimond-Smith, writes:

"Toytee likes to balance on my arm or shoulder when we dance together and instead of me leading, I try to let her movements dictate the action. After we have danced about for a while she'll turn to me in such a way that I know she's sharing the experience with me. It is a really wonderful moment. It is the unity of Toytee's purpose with mine, the blending of her pleasure with my pleasure that creates a vital emotional bond between us and allows us to work together. And her interest becomes more outward directed, concentrated and trusting. It is her trust that is so special."

I know. I know. It's hard to take this seriously. Which may, perhaps, be part of the charm of this whole Cat Dancing thing. On the other hand, it's undeniable evidence that those who are playful enough can transcend even the boundaries of species, and find genuine delight. Perhaps, for the good of our fun-loving souls, we should all consider enrolling in a Feline Dance Class.

Virtual Word Games

Fowl Words is, as advertised, a word game. The Fowl part? Letter-laying chickens.

It's one of those "how many words can you make from these letters" games. Each chicken is a letter. Above the chickens is an egg crate. Every time you click on a chicken, it clucks. When you complete a word and press "Enter," the word goes into its position in the crate.

Even at the beginning level, you've got a big crate to fill. But it's the chickens (and the timer) that keep you going. They're so darn ridiculous.

Compared to other word games, like my recently reviewed Word Find game Letter Lasso and much-praised, Boggle-like Bookworm, Fowl Words is far less innovative. It doesn't add a new play principle. But the sheer silliness of those clucking chickens, along with the ease and functionality of the interface, is really all it takes to make it into a valuable addition to our collection of virtual word games.

One final observation: unlike many interactive computer games, virtual word games invite participation from observers as well as mousers. This makes them a wonderful resource for group play. Even though only one person is actually doing the clicking, everyone can join in the clucking.