ADP - Play and Object

Theme

 Play and Object

Context

Amongst the research that I was doing for this week’s project I came across Stop motion piece called Matches by Geza M.Toth which is based on a highly witty concept that is visually simple yet effective. While playing with his colourful matchsticks, a little boy is talking about his dreams, fears and hopes. The matchsticks bring his visions to life. The film is based on an interview with a 7-year-old child and delivers a poignant and highly creative animation of the young boy’s philosophy of life entirely through match sticks. Matches being emotive in the storytelling, can be also considered as a visual experiment in perception psychology. The creative and playful visuals and the surprising sound design create mood and emotions.

In addition to Matches getting introduced to Simon Nicholson theory of Loose Parts was another factor to form my project for this week. According to Nicholson in any environment, both the degree of inventiveness and creativity, and the possibility of discovery, are directly proportional to the number and kind of variables in it.  Materials which can be moved around, designed and redesigned, and tinkered with; create infinitely more opportunities for creative engagement than static materials and environments. Basically, the more materials there are, the more people can interact. 

Method

Make a stop motion animation with loose parts.

Response

 I started looking for an object that contained a lot of parts and found a used camera in my storage, I started deconstructing it to get all the bits and pieces which is one of my favourite things to do! After taking out all of the screws I was left with a lot of tiny pieces and started adding things together and screwing them back on which lead me to build my character. I used an app called stop motion on my iPad to capture the photos frame by frame and put it all together. I instantly wanted to share the unfinished work on Instagram and in the process, I ended up using a song by Bjork and a dreamy filter.

Link to the response:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BboRKuf9t1s

Reflection

I found stop motion animation and playing with loose part quite charming, so I hope to get the equipment and experiment more in the future! The outcome wasn’t polished, but the process was fun and playful! I made a short stop motion animation which depicts my character chasing the sun. There were lots of possibilities to set the scene or look for more objects that can be added but considering the time frame it wasn’t really possible. But to situate the work in a context that connects my exercises with relevant theories, models and approaches of play, I will continue discussing another category of the pleasure principles of play as I started in the previous week.

One of the aspects that became relevant in terms of the work that I did for this week was exploration. According to Lieberman “The processes of exploration are seen as a precursor to playful behaviour. Through exploration the unfamiliar becomes familiar and it is then that play occurs. To discuss this topic further, Hutt, Studies of playful behaviour report an oscillation between these states of exploration and play with the player switching back and forth between the explorative goal “what can this object do” and the playful goal “what can I do with this object” I found this idea quite relative and close to my response, considering myself the “player” or the participant in this exercise, I constantly asked myself the same questions in the process of making my character and fully explored the physical aspect of all the loose parts and how I can incorporate all of them to make a character.

References

Lieberman, J.N.: Playfulness: Its Relationship to Imagination and Creativity. Academic Press, New York, (1977)

Hutt, C.: Exploration and Play in Children. Sutton Smith, B. and Herron, R.E. (eds.) Child's Play, Robert E. Krieger Pub Co, Florida, (1985) 231-250

Costello, Brigid, and Ernest Edmonds. “A Study in Play, Pleasure and Interaction Design.” Proceedings of the 2007 Conference on Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces. ACM, 2007. 76–91. Web.

"Matches (Updated), By Géza M.Tóth". Stop Motion Magazine, 2020, https://stopmotionmagazine.com/matches-by-geza-m-toth/. Accessed 7 Mar 2021.