Author: Rebecca Bednarz

Cosplayers at PAX East: Transcript

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz

So I’m cosplaying as Lucina from Fire Emblem Awakening. It’s probably my favorite in the Fire Emblem franchise. She’s also playable in the Super Smash Bros. so she’s probably a little more widely known.

Today I’m cosplaying as old Luke from The Force Awakens.

My name is Tritemare and I’m the Kigurumi King. I’m a Twitch broadcaster of three years, and this is my costume and character.

My character’s name is Mei. She is from the game Overwatch. She was a scientist and she was cryogenically frozen because of an accident that happened. And I like her because she’s just so bubbly. She’s so happy and she’s ready to take on the world.

My character is from the game Overwatch. It’s a fun first-person shooter game. She’s also a female gamer—a Korean female gamer. And since Korean female gamers kinda get a lot of hate and a lot of sexism and stuff, like, it’s really cool to have a character that exists that, you know, represents something that could be.

It’s something that you can’t do anywhere else. You can’t go and dress up as your favorite character and walk out . . .

I went to Dunkin’ Donuts this morning and people were staring at me like I was nuts!

Well, it’s overall something that sets you apart. And it’s another way to make yourself unique.

Instead of being the shy person that fixes computers, I can run around and say, nerf this!

She’s very shy normally. Like, this is the most I’ve heard her speak in, like, ten years.

I’m very specific with my work now. Like, my gloves took me eleven hours to make, my shirt took me about seventeen.

Everyone has the pose they come with and that’s the character they embody. So when someone asks me for a picture, I do that scene at the end when he pulls his hood off and gives Rey that dopey look.

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Games for Social Change: Interview Transcript

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz

So, I’m known really for many of the social change–based games that I create. Whether it’s the physical, fiscal sport Budgetball that’s played on the National Mall and talks about what it feels like to go into debt and what it feels like to get out of debt—both on a personal and federal level—to a game that gives a history of activism in different cities called Re:Activism, which has been played across the country.

You know Brecht used, had a quote, something about, “Art should not be a mirror; it should be a hammer to shape reality.” And I think there’s something interesting there, and I do think that games and culture provide us with an opportunity to push against the boundaries of a system and the rules of the system so we really look at all the possibilities. We break out of our own thought patterns and find new ways to think, and new perspectives and new points of view.

It lets us play as a kind of person that may not be socially acceptable in real life. So, you know, I can go out there and explore all kinds of issues without the kind of serious consequences that I might have in real life. So, play gives us that opportunity to really try things out, and then, maybe when we’re done, to think about how we can apply that kind of playful mindset to the world we live in.

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Let’s play!

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz

Let’s play!

While the PlayTime exhibition ended in May 2018, PlayTime on pem.org is still up for engagement. We started the conversation here: how is play changing our lives? Check out more on the artists involved and explore the shifting role of play in art and culture with us.

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The Natives Are Restless: A Video Poem

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz

Poet and former professional basketball player Natalie Diaz’s experimental poetic text in video form interrogates the language used in sports commentary.

This video plays with a common phrase, “The Natives Are Restless,” which has been used by Western white men to describe indigenous or natives from Africa, from the islands, from before America. It is used often in sports casting, color commentary, and in articles written about sports. I came across it several times in the last few months while watching or reading news articles pre- and post-contest.

I wanted to press on this text, to find ways to break or bend it, but not react to it. I wanted to play with this ridiculous phrase in a way to show its ridiculousness. It has never been the natives who are restless. It is one of many phrases used in our everyday American language that most Americans would argue IS NOT racist. Nothing is racist in America anymore—instead, everything is a misunderstanding, a mistake, an accident, an offense taken by someone. I wanted to give this phrase a new space where we might see it for what it is, no matter how common or every-day it is. Racism, after all, is an everyday thing, both for the racist body and the body acted upon by that racism.

I also toyed with the idea of how a poem works and moves as a visual sound, as a playful movement in the space between text and image. Can I make a poem move in between the eye and ear without sound? Can I somehow mimic the texture/sound of a basketball game—the ball touching and also sounding in the palm and fingertips, the breath banging through the body, the eyes moving almost in cadence with shoes on the blacktop or hardwood.

I am trying to make text do more than sit statically against a white space—I’m trying to make text play? Can I make the Native body visible without giving you an image that fits what you know a Native to look like? Is this film only text, or is it image, is it soundless or can you hear it? I wish to make you, your eye, your idea of the native, the body, the image and its sounds, restless.

Larping at PEM: An Interview

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz

“You can think about it . . . as being in your own movie or being the protagonist in your own novel.”

Whether you’re a litigious ghost or a rock with an existential crisis, Lizzie Stark is the perfect person to guide you through your first larp, a style of performative live action roleplaying. Lizzie recently visited PEM to give our guides a crash course in this emerging phenomenon.

Games Adults Play: A Comic Series

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz

Comic Josh Gondelman and artist Molly Roth share a list of just a few of their favorite games that adults play. Simon says . . . no, really, please stop.

SIMON CAN’T STOP SAYING THINGS ABOUT POLITICS

Number of players: 2, or as many as can logistically engage in a single conversation

Description of gameplay: Any number of players may participate in this game, time and space permitting. One player (Simon) just goes on and on about his or her political opinions. Other players may nod quietly, disagree, or leave the room.

Game ends when…: Victory is declared for Simon when all opponents walk away to get a drink, or when the first opponent says: “Can we just talk about something else for a while?” Simon loses when forced to concede: “You know, I’d never thought of it that way.”

 

Missed the last Games Adults Play? Check it out here.

What Loves Me Enough: A Play Poem

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz

Poet Anis Mojgani draws out the play in the spoken word. The beat goes on in this original poem for PlayTime.

I reflected some on what play as an idea was/is to me, how I might define it and recognize its presence in me, and this brief list was penned:

Play

– movement without tangible/tactile purpose

– exercise for the imagination

– the gut’s response to the soul’s joyous language

– builds on top of the arrival of a good feeling

– what the body uses its exterior to say back to the music that is heard only within its interior

And with those thoughts present in my thoughts, began writing.

 

What Loves Me Enough

what loves me enough
to come for no reason but to move itself through me
from the interior world into the exterior one
to make itself known from me being in both

when standing
in a field
I then too
am field

in me
the field is a wide kingdom

inside the kingdom I am
what does the empty grass sound like
what is the song that plays
what passes

between the tree and its leaves
causing it to become an instrument?
what plays it?
the sky?
what is playing me?
in what ways do I as well become an instrument for the invisible musicians?
and what is the music that moves through me?
is it built of notes and measures?
maybe neither
or maybe both in a different form of song

the orchard an orchestra

the way my arm moves
when pulled by something unseen
causing a picture to appear
causing a poem to become
causing a laugh of the heart to be heard
what plays the laugh out of my love
what gives it a shadow

what is the taste in my mouth that comes from climbing the branches

from coloring a blank space

with a crayon
a marker
a paintbrush
my hands
my feet
my body
dancing
to a sound or none

jump over
something just because
I’m bigger than it
jump over something
just because
it is bigger than me
and my feet need to show me how much like wings they can be

at which point does skipping down the street stop
at which point did I begin to feel that whistling the sound of my inside is only for a child to make

why not the whistle
why not the skip

at which point
does it stop that which my body and being are saying
to one another
is there a time in which
we say back
shhhhhhh
quiet
that part of time that is not of me
not now
me and my being
have things to do
even if
we are
doing
nothing

my job is not to find
the reason for this
but to simply
breathe it forth

to move without purpose
outside of
how my body responds
to the most immediate wind
which seeks to speak
to my heart
seeks to enter into me
a soundless music
picking up a rock
I feel not its weight
but my own

I do not wish definition given
to that which is given
what the gift is
does not matter so much
as that the gift is a thing giving itself to someone
what word inside the universe loves me enough
to give itself to me
by attempting to give it a shape
outside of how my brain and my heart wish
to play with one another
to bridge the space that stretches between their shapes

all our dark sweet cherry
the early robins
hold hands
with the unseen zebra
or the rain purpling over the rooftop
the invisible three armed violin player
climbing into the moon
winking back at me
a secret
I will not pass aloud
but will
nonetheless
still give away

 

 

(Image credits: Photo by Allison White/PEM.)

Game Design That Moves You: An Interview

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz

“A lot of times people get caught up into tropes about games and I really want to say: How can we sort of expand what a game is? How can we expand what it means to play? How can we expand what culture is?”

Choreographer and game designer Boris Willis and his students at George Mason University step away from the keyboard to discover how important their own body movement is to designing games.

Games Adults Play: A Comic Series

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz

Comic Josh Gondelman and artist Molly Roth share a list of just a few of their favorite games that adults play. Seriously, call your mother.

TELEPHONE (YOUR PARENTS ONCE IN A WHILE)

Number of players: 2-5, depending on remarriages

Description of gameplay: One player (Offspring) reminds him/herself to call their parents. Points are awarded for every successful phone conversation. Leaving a voicemail message counts for half a point, as does listening to any voicemail from a parent that lasts over a minute.

Game ends when…: Let’s not talk about the end of this game. It’s too sad.

 

Look for the next installment of Games Adults Play in the coming weeks. Missed the last one? Check it out here.

Games Adults Play: A Comic Series

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz

Comic Josh Gondelman and artist Molly Roth share a list of just a few of their favorite games that adults play. We wave the flag with renewed energy this week.

 

RECAPTURE THE FLAG…GING ENTHUSIASM FOR THINGS YOU ONCE LOVED

Number of players: 1, or however many you can convince to play with you

Description of gameplay: Player attempts to rekindle their youthful passion by playing in an adult sports league, attending live performances, or taking up a new creative hobby.

Game ends when…: The player wins when he or she successfully convinces his/her friends and co-workers to see their band or improv team perform live. Another path to victory is an entire holiday season spent giving away handmade gifts, crafted with a newly formed skill.

 

Look for the next installment of Games Adults Play in the coming weeks. Missed the last one? Check it out here.

Games Adults Play: A Comic Series

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz

Comic Josh Gondelman and artist Molly Roth share a list of just a few of their favorite games that adults play. This week’s game is a hop, skip, and a jump—and repeat—until retirement.

JOBSCOTCH

Number of players: 1

Description of gameplay: Player jumps from job to job attempting to find satisfaction and financial security while avoiding stress, poverty, and harassment. Each game lasts roughly 45 years.

Game ends when…: The player wins when he or she retires with benefits and savings.

 

Look for the next installment of Games Adults Play in the coming weeks. Missed the last one? Check it out here.

Avatar: A Game

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz
Avatars are increasingly a part of the digital landscape. How do they (or don’t they) describe the person behind the screen? The PlayTime avatar interactive and game explores just this.

Several of the PlayTime artists—Nick Cave, Paul McCarthy, Angela Washko, Gwen Smith—dress up and disguise themselves or their subjects to explore identity, gender, and environment in order to move fluidly between analog and digital environments. Inspired by how they try on different selves, the avatar interactive and game—available to visitors in the PlayTime exhibition and now online—offers players the opportunity to design their own avatar and to consider how people represent themselves digitally versus in real life.

What’s your avatar? Try the interactive web game on desktop now. Content is generally suitable for all ages.

 

(Team credits: Commissioned by the Peabody Essex Museum for PlayTime. Game design by Kellian Adams, Green Door Labs. Art by Dirk Tiede, UI design by Vibhuti Giltrap, coding by Andy Hall, Test Tube Games.)

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