Re: [-empyre-] PLAY Tlönic
Christian McCrea
saccharinmetric at gmail.com
Thu Mar 13 16:21:28 EST 2008
I just want to play with some ideas from this post by Margarete
Jahrmann before other threads become too long to weave back.. some fun
to be had here:
> Frasca further discussed the borders of games (sorry, Huizinga was not
> published 58 ;)... but it is widely ignored, that Huizinga did introduce
> the magic circle differently in the 30ties. Why we shall accept that the
> political circumstances of the time when this reflection on play and
> culture were without any affection on the theory developed? Is the
> systematics expressing far more a cultural mirror of societies changing
> towards totalitarian systems? Is the actual rush towards real gaming
> mirroring a frustration in real life?
This is really telling; from my understanding of Huizinga, there was
an almost urgent pressing towards play not as a model for something
else but the something else itself.
> For me the alternate reality game is the interesting
> question - what if the game dissolves the borders.
Well I think thats why (if you'll excuse me saying so) that the work
of the Ludic
Society in its different forms has been so light-bringing (or
foghorn-sounding) and challenging to the orthodoxy of games
thinking/knowledge/theory/etc, which I would propose has been
occuring; play first, play first, play first - its not a trick that is
easily turned into a method, or a new rule, which is what people are
used to in a way.
> What happens if the
> situation of play is similar to the imaginary land introduces by Jorge
> Luis Borges under the triple name "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", when the
> OBJECTS of fictional worlds break into the realm of a paradox "reality".
Well several of the usual art suspects come to mind, but in reading
Borges there is always that respect for craft so I am keen to bring up
one of the persona geek gratis of games culture - the productive
crafts. I'm referring to the vast network of productive game geek
stores and shop-sellers; earrings, belts, handbags, clothes, hats,
t-shirts, teapots - game themed handcrafts cannot be seen as a
byproduct, or the realm of the capitalist, or literally unthinkable. I
have had to argue for their 'researchability' before which is
ludicrious. Of course they are the byproducts of a tension; the
machines are digital but our relationships seems unfinished. Pac-man
is free from his maze, come to be printed on my t-shirt. It can't be
corporate-made (like the grotesque Street Fighter 2 shirts being sold
at Levi's stores ATM - mixing up the artwork from SF2 Turbo and Super
SF2 Turbo - unforgivable!) It has to be hand-made, within the
community, even if it not communal or subcultural.
The culture of ingenuity, of the productive injoke, visible in places
like the Boing-Boing associated Make magazine, in the dozens and
dozens of podcasts, illustrative art websites, all percolates really
into the game art scene in a very very visible way. So yes lets take
account of the history of media art first, but while we have out the
microscope, lets look at the history of fun with skills! There is
something intrinsically nostalgic or historical about how games uses
the weave of the loom (looms and screens being long linked, of
course).
Sometimes this feels like a big secret to discuss... but Micheal
Dieter's link to the hidden world of game characters stirred this
thought.
> addendum:. Beside the methodological approach towards the "Magic circle"
> of play - Huizinga mentioned this images of games in a different way
> than it is often used in contemporary game studies. He was not so much
> interested in the distinction to Reality, but in the activity, often the
> mythic activity, which this circle allows.
> Sure, if one critiques actual game studies in this concern, a
> juxtaposition must be suggested.
Game studies has been brutally careless about its approach to many
things (and I indict myself in sometimes following rote formula to
appease a sense of struggle that the field wants to thrive on) but
above all, the magic circle might be the most strangely overwritten
but undertheorised concept. (a conference next month in Finland on the
topic could make some interesting papers -
http://breakingmagiccircle.wordpress.com/)
Thanks for provoking some long-lost thoughts,
-Christian McCrea
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