Junkyard Sports Found Object Tabletop Olympics

Ask me what game - of all the wacky and sometimes profound works of play art that I've created in my 40-plus years of wacky and profound play art creation - I played with the top creative people at LEGO.

No. It was Found Object Tabletop Olympics.

Earlier this year, at the LEGO Design Conference, it and I reached some kind of apotheosis. It had a lot to do with our reaching the right audience at the right time. One of the participants, Lucius Margulis, took copious photos of the event. Here is his post, and below, a compilation of his photos and clips.

Found Object Tabletop Olympics event is based on the approach to play and creativity I described in Junkyard Sports. But it is the first Junkyard Sport I designed where the materials (junk) are truly "found objects" - totally random, collected from whatever the participants happen to have with them at the time, or can find in the room.

It was a big step for me, letting go of deciding exactly what junk people will get to play with. I had built the book and the concept around the art of assembling just the right collection of materials that would help get people to play and think together. And then discovering that without any special junk it was just as much fun and just as profound - and much, much easier to produce. I'm not saying that it's better - assembling a collection of the "right" materials is an art in itself - just that it works, that it's still fun, still meaningful. A different kind of meaning, though, because the "junk" comes from what people have, and what they are willing to share, and what the people who provide the room leave around.

So the whole thing takes on an extra meaning - letting people find their own junk helps them discover the wealth of what's around them, at their fingertips and in their very pockets. Helps them discover the wealth of resources they have to play with, and the people, too.


from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith