Rick Hamrick sends us a cooperative drawing game of his invention. Actually, he sent it to me, and I asked if he'd mind sharing it with all you very deep funsters. I took the liberty of giving it a name. He took the time to give us the game:
The game is simple: start with a blank piece of paper on a flat surface and two people on opposite sides of the paper. Each is given a pen and instructed to start drawing a picture on the half of the page closest to them. Each person is to draw only on their side. The challenge is to adjust the image you are seeking to create so that it is complemented somehow by the image the other person is creating on the other half of the piece of paper.
So, of course, each player is seeking to incorporate the others art even as it is being created. A moving target!
Only one rule: no talking about the art in progress. Conversation is welcome, but it cannot be about the game or what each is drawing.
When one of the two players decides that the work is done, the other person has a brief time to complete the bit they are drawing, then the game concludes with each person describing their work. An added twist would be for each to guess what the other had in mind prior to the person describing it. Emphasis is on how they incorporated the other person's work into their own and telling a good story about it.
No winner or loser, only time spent in a cooperative task where cooperation is made a challenge because you cannot talk about it. And, the story-telling part at the end can be outrageous and laughter-inducing.
I see many implications. Many applications. Many variations. Three people? Online perhaps? O, the fun, the drawing together.
It is once again time to write about the "the most unique food charity in the world" - Canstruction.
Canstruction, you ask? I quote:
"A foundation of the Society for Design Administration (SDA), Canstruction® is a Trademarked design/build competition currently held in cities throughout North America Australia and cities from around the world will soon be participating. Teams of architects, engineers, and students mentored by these professionals, compete to design and build giant structures made entirely from full cans of food. It takes 8-12 weeks and thousands of cans of food to create a structure.
"The results are displayed to the public as magnificent sculpture exhibits in each city where a competition is held. The public is invited to donate canned food at the time of the exhibition. At the close of the exhibitions all of the canned food used in the structures is donated to local food banks for distribution to emergency feeding programs that include pantries, soup kitchens, elderly and day care centers. "
So what you get is playfulness, creativity, art, technology, and charity! What a perfect combination! How Deep Fun-worthy!
Except, maybe, for the competition part. I mean, what do they do with the losing cans? And why should anyone have to lose when everyone can, if you excuse the expression, win so much? It saddened me, just a little bit. I expressed this very concern to Canstruction president and executive director Nick Telesca. He responded: "It is not sad. It is ingenious. We have created an exciting way for people to volunteer and to help others. We had over 120 competitions across North America. Over 10,000 volunteers participated and we raised over 2 million pounds of food. It is phenomenal! All of the food is donated to the local food bank. "
Youtube has some great clips of hand shadow performances. The Richard Balzer collection features an inspiring hand shadow webpage as well as other playworthy illusions.
In the fifth in a series of articles, intriguingly called Play Makes Us Human, Dr. Peter Gray muses about Why Hunter-Gatherers Work is Play. Like all the articles in the series, Dr. Grey's analysis is thought-provoking and well-informed. In exploring what hunter-gatherer societies think of as work, Dr. Gray writes:
In general, hunter-gatherers do not have a concept of toil. When they do have that concept, it derives apparently from their contact with outsiders. They may learn a word for toil to refer to the work of their neighboring farmers, miners, or road construction workers, but they do not apply it to their own work. Their own work is simply an extension of children's play. Children play at hunting, gathering, hut construction, tool making, meal preparations, defense against predators, birthing, infant care, healing, negotiation, and so on and so on; and gradually, as their play become increasingly skilled, the activities become productive. The play becomes work, but it does not cease being play. It may even become more fun than before, because the productive quality helps the whole band and is valued by all.
Dr. Gray reaches some conclusions about hunter-gatherer ideas of work which could prove very powerful in helping cybercitizens redefine the work-play connection:
Hunter-Gatherers' Work is Playful Because It is Varied and Requires Much Skill, Knowledge, and Intelligence.
Hunter-Gatherers' Work is Playful Because There Isn't too Much of It.
Hunter-Gatherers' Work is Playful Because It Is Done in a Social Context, with Friends.
Hunter-Gatherers' Work is Playful Because Each Person Can Choose When, How, and Whether to Do It.
We have a great deal to learn from Africa, about celebrations, about recycling, about living with little, about the generosity of spirit. One of my favorite resources is a site called Afrigadget where I recently learned about a project called: Football Made in Africa.
By focusing on the game of Soccer (which everyone in the world except here calls "football"), Football Made in Africa gives us a window into the joy of sport and the irrepressibility of the need to play. Under development by a talents group of artists called Take Five, the goal is to create 50, 90-second videos, like this one showing how to make a soccer ball out of a condom and some string, documenting the spirit of Africa through the game of soccer. They explain:
With the 2010 World Cup in South Africa just a year away, it seems only natural to talk about Africa. Not the Africa of poverty, conflicts and capable Africa of Football Made in Africa, or the grassroot portrait of a continent that lives, thrives and enthuses on football!
Every episode offers an original angle on a story, a slice of everyday life, where football is present everywhere. From the production of goals in the outskirts of Maputo to the atmosphere in bars where matches are aired on tiny TV screens, the harvesting of rubber tree waste to make balls or the beaches of Cameroon where fishermen use their nets to play. The films are funny and poetic snapshots that reflect the unique imagination and energy of the African continent.
Football Made in Africa demonstrates all the creativity and dynamism of the peoples obliged to deploy a fair amount of cleverness and resourcefulness on a daily basis to be able to indulge in their passion: football.
Football Made in Africa is a canvas on which African society is painted. The different episodes are the colours, applied one by one, that produce a diversified picture of today's Africa.
And, of course, the insights go way beyond Africa, far further than country or continent, exploring the geography of the human soul.
The Bilibo Game Box is not just a toy. It is a tool kit for the very young game designer (age 4 and up) and an invitation to inventiveness for the rest of us.
The Game Box contains a die with interchangeable faces and six sets of differently-colored discs that fit in each face. There's also a set of six, plastic, hand-sized "mini-Bilibos," in each of the six colors corresponding to the colors of the discs.
Bilibos are shaped something like pregnant plastic Pringles, with holes that look almost like eyes. Full-sized Bilibos are big enough for a kid to sit, spin, rock, float, climb in or on, or pretend with. The simple, friendly, colorful design invites creativity, exploration, and invention, and nurtures playfulness. No moving parts. Just a funny shape to explore, define, redefine, shape your dreams on. Mini-Bilibos are just as strange, just as funny, just as fun to play with. And, as son-in-law Tom observed, function quite satisfactorily as doll helmets.
The die is called a Bilibo Pixel. It is made of some surprisingly bouncy and slightly stretchy plastic. The corners are so wonderfully rounded that it rolls as well as bounces almost as well as a rubber ball. Button-like pieces fit in each of the faces of the die where there are cavities deep enough not only to accommodate any of the discs, but also to fit little messages or prizes, or, if you are so inclined, weights. So you can play around with fate, as it were, making some of the faces the same color or all of the faces different, adding and removing things behind the colored buttons to influence where the die might fall and add further elements of surprise.
The Bilibo Game Box gives your child a set of almost infinitely enticing properties and relationships to explore. Without even reading anything even closely approximating rules, the child will find herself using the die in some way to indicate which mini-Bilibo she should aim for. Aim what, you might ask. Any of those color-coded, button-like discs which can be slid or juggled or tossed or tiddled under or over or through. Or strung together, for that matter, or strung together with a mini-Bilibo.
As children continue to explore the properties and relationships of the Bilibo Game Box, they will inevitably discover that the elements can be used in conjunction with a surprisingly varied array of other objects in their environment - chairs and steps, tables, counter-tops, floors. They can make targets and game boards with sheets of paper, ramps and obstacles out of paper plates and sheets of cardboard, die-launchers and Bilibo-flippers out of spoons and rulers.
Alex Hochstrasser, designer of the Bilibo Game Box and associated products, has created a work of playful genius. The simplicity of the components belie the elegance of design and the depth of understanding of the nature of creative play.
There are several delightful videos on Youtube that illustrate a few of the plethora of possibilities contained in the Bilibo Game Box, and a well-illustrated booklet that accompanies each Game Box for yet more ideas, and, soon, even more will be on the Bilibo website.
Despite all these resources, please, consider this: the more you and your children play together with this, openly, inventing games from scratch, without any guidance other than that which comes from your collectively playful hearts, the greater the value of your experiences with this remarkable toy. If you want ideas, let your children be your guide. The Bilibo Game Box is remarkably innovative and brilliantly designed, but the real value of it only becomes apparent when it is used as a tool for playful, inspired invention.
"At the 2008 Serious Play conference, designer Tim Brown talks about the powerful relationship between creative thinking and play -- with many examples you can try at home (and one that maybe you shouldn't)." Tim Brown is CEO of Ideo.
The Bilibo Game Box
The Bilibo Game Box gives your child a set of almost infinitely enticing properties and relationships to explore. Without even reading anything even closely approximating rules, the child will find herself using the die in some way to indicate which mini-Bilibo she should aim for. Aim what, you might ask. Any of those color-coded, button-like discs which can be slid or juggled or tossed or tiddled under or over or through. Or strung together, for that matter, or strung together with a mini-Bilibo.
