APD Week 3 | Objects

This week I looked at the connection between objects and play, both through the theory of loose parts and constructive play. I chose to use food as my object to play on the phrase “Don’t play with your food”, as it is something that most people will have been told at one point or another is the wrong or impolite thing to do. This would force participants to contextualise their behaviour and attitudes towards the objects and interact with them in new ways.

In an ideal world I would have set up a space in the MAGI studio where other students or staff would be presented with identical plates of food and tools (spoon, knife, chopsticks etc) and given the opportunity to participate. Due to the current lockdown however, I completed the task myself four times with differing approaches. The only guidelines were that there was no real right or wrong way to transform the food and I could spend as much time as I wanted working with it. I had considered using foods that were already formed into shapes that resembled building blocks to more easily facilitate constructive play, but decided against it as it may have limited the possible kinds of responses. 

When initially conceptualising this idea I remembered the exhibit Counting the Rice by Marina Abramović at MONA in Hobart Tasmania, however that is a highly structured activity with specific rules to guide participants. Instead  I looked at practitioners such as Cas Holman, the designer behind the Rigamajig and an advocate for open ended play. They give children the opportunity to ask the question “I'm sitting next to this thing, what shall I do with it?”(Dezeen 2020, para. 3) and I wanted to give adults a similar experience. With this we work with the theory of loose parts that states that the degree of inventiveness, creativity and possibility of discovery are related to the kinds of variables available to the person (Nicholson 1971).

In the future I would like to run this experiment again with actual participants from a wide demographic and record the different responses. I would also perhaps use a wider variety of fresh produce, however with this iteration I wanted to keep food wastage low and primarily used things that would remain shelf stable. Adding additional colours, temperatures and textures would also greatly increase the ways in which people could respond.

Dezeen 2020, Cas Holman toy designer interview, viewed 9 August 2021, <https://www.dezeen.com/2020/02/14/cas-holman-toy-designer-interview/>. 

Nicholson, S 1971, ‘Nicholson; How not to cheat children’, Landscape Architecture, vol. 62, pp 30-34.