Tag: pem-playtime

Dispatches from the Field: SkeeBoston: Transcript

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz

I’ve never met anyone that hates Skee-Ball. It’s a game that you played as a kid at an old Chuck E. Cheese or a skating rink. I came to Boston and I missed my friends that I met through a Skee-Ball league down in Raleigh. Approached the owner of The Greatest Bar and told him we could bring in a bunch of people on an off night. He looked at me like, great, you know, let’s make it happen. We had almost a hundred and fifty people right out of the gate. Five and a half years later, we’re on our seventeenth skeeson now.

We have three skeeball skeesons a year, eight weeks long, and they culminate in a team playoff and an individual playoff. We have a top sixty-four  NCAA bracket and we play down until there’s one last person standing and they are the champion in Boston.

Skeeson means season. Hundos for hundreds.

40 streak means out of your nine balls you get to roll, you roll all 40s.

I thought it was very strange that they insisted on saying hundo instead of hundreds. And I was like, guys, can’t you just say hundreds. And then I started playing and hundo is just so much easier to say and makes you sound a lot cooler in the skeeball world.

Everyone joins kickball leagues and it comes with trophies and shirts and beer. We just bring it inside, year round.

I think it’s sort of fun to be really good at something really silly like Skee-Ball.

All of our team names are like Skee-Ball puns.

This season we were the Hunger Lanes.

Born to Skee Wild.

It Ain’t Easy Being Skeezy.

I think our favorite one was Skee-dazzled where we essentially bedazzled ha jean jackets.

My team name is called the Premature Combinations: Sponsored by Skeealis.

We’ve had people meet and get married. We’ve had babies come out of relationships at Skee-Ball.

I mean they’ll be people that will be in my wedding, they’ll be bridesmaids.

So it’s more the people, less the game. But the game is pretty fun.

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Writing Trivia Is Hard: Interview Transcript

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz

My name is Travis Larchuk and I am the head writer of NPR’s Ask Me Another, which is a public radio quiz show. It’s an hour long show, it airs on the weekends in most places, and it’s hosted by a comedian Ophira Eisenberg. We have a musician whose famous from the internet, Jonathan Coulton. It’s a very nerdy show. At the end there’s a winner. They win a Rubix cube that cost us nine dollars. It’s very low stakes.

Writing trivia is hard, there’s a lot of fact-checking involved. You have to make sure that there is only one answer to the question, which is harder than you might think. For example, who’s the spy with the initials J.B. who was the star of a blockbuster movie franchise? It could be James Bond but it could also be Jason Bourne. Or if you go into TV it could be Jack Bauer. It could be Jack Bristow from Alias. There are a ton of spies with the initials J.B.!

The last thing that you want is for somebody to give an answer and then you have to stop down everything while get on to Google to see if they are actually correct and that they have just slipped into a hole that you didn’t even realize was there.

We had on our show a big controversy because the answer to a clue about a food that smelled bad but tasted great was. We said it was jackfruit and a lot of people wrote in and said it was durian. There was a huge controversy about it. I don’t want your letters! I do not want your letters about this. I’ve read enough of them. Public radio listeners love to let you know when you’re wrong. And they’re great! And please continue to donate to your local public radio station.

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Disarm: An Interview: Transcript

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz

My name is Pedro Reyes and what I do is mainly sculpture. Disarm is a project . . . It is a set of musical instruments made out of destroyed weapons.

[sound of flute being played]

To make a guitar or to make a violin or to make a drum set we were working very much like cavemen. You know blowing and scratching and banging these pieces of metal, trying to figure out how to make sound with them.

[bell rhythm]

It is very important to train our capacity to play, to be a little bit foolish. I am not a musician. I often invite musicians to create compositions, which is super exciting because it means that every time that they play it is a new thing.

[guitar-like instrument riff]

The best thing is when when you don’t know when a project continues to bring surprises.

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Dispatches from the Field: Come Out and Play: Transcript

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz

5 4 3 2…[whistle]

[music with clapping]

So Come Out and Play is an annual festival. We’ve been running it now for twelve years.

It offers free games created—original games created by designers from all over the country, sometimes outside of the country.

You know, we think of it as a big street game field day festival.

People go out and use this dowsing rod to help you find different types of sound.

Right now we are at Come Out and Play Family Day here on Governor’s Island in New York City.

Myself and my colleagues at Brooklyn Game Lab are out here demoing Battle Lab, which is our physical live action roleplaying program.

What we’ve brought today is actually a couple different games that our campers have designed this summer. We go through the whole process from brainstorming, writing the rules, play testing, fixing it, and play testing it again. And finally playing and sharing our games.

Come Out and Play is a festival that started off just really for  teens and adults, and has expanded to have games for people of all ages.

I played games. I went to the fencing. I went to the throwing the ball and putting it in the bucket.

We really think about, like,  how do we get people to play together in different ways. It has to feel surprising and fresh, right? There’s nothing sadder in this world than a hopscotch grid that you’ve seen like eight times. They want a game that allows them to hang out with their friends. It’s a three-minute game that between like three and twenty-one people can jump in and play. It takes me like a minute and a half to explain, and once you’ve seen it played I don’t really have to explain it to you at all. And if somebody doesn’t like it, they’re like, alright, I’m going to go do something else. And then somebody else is like, this is my jam, I’m going to do this all night! This is our practice. This is, like, how we think about making something. We just want people to have experiences that they think are joyful and fun.

[music]

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Pedro Reyes

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz
“It is very important to train ourselves in our capacity to play, to be a little bit foolish.”

 

WHO

Pedro Reyes (born 1972, Mexico) lives and works in Mexico City. Having studied architecture, Reyes is keenly interested in how people interact with structures—both built and imagined. While his projects take many forms, they often explore ideas of utopian societies and social revolution. His choice of materials is often inspired by political or social issues, such as gun control and citizenship.

 

WHAT

Disarm Mechanized II is a mechanical orchestra made out of weapons seized by the Mexican police in Ciudad Juárez. As a response to the drug cartel wars, Reyes dismantled the guns to create this work. He collaborated with local musicians to design and build the instruments, and also to compose the music you hear.

 

WHY

The prevalence of gun violence in Mexico and the United States led Reyes to explore how deadly weapons could be turned into agents of peace and social change. By repurposing the guns to make music, he rejects their original violent function.

 

LISTEN

PlayTime curator Trevor Smith discusses how Pedro Reyes uses play for social change. Read the transcript.

 

 

WATCH

Pedro Reyes on the relationship between play and creativity. Read the transcript.

 

 

 

WORKS

 

Disarm Mechanized ll, 2012–14
Recycled metal from decommissioned weapons
Courtesy of the artist and Lisson Gallery

 

(Image credits: Photo by Allison White/PEM; © Pedro Reyes; photo by Allison White/PEM.)

Finish This Sentence: Play Is: Transcript

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz

Pedro Reyes: Play is central to the creative process. To have room to play is to have room to say what if?

Eric Zimmerman: There is the play of shadows on the wall. There’s the idea of playing a musical instrument.

Jade Ivy: Going outside and playing Woodchucks with your friends, like, on a warm, sunny day. You’re just kicking back, relaxing.

Eric Turiel: Relax, take a load off.

Tritemare: Very reminiscent of childhood, early things. Things that ordinarily aren’t fun become fun.

Charlotte Richards: Starting from when we’re really young, it’s the foundation of how we learn, how we have fun.

Mattie Brice: Play is a context where we practice or live through—sort of—alternate realities and experiment with new customs and protocols for various forms of catharsis or exploration.

Travis Larchuk: You’ve got work, rest, and play. Play is the one that is not work or rest.

Jaden D. Francis: Dancing with my mom. And I play with my bike.

Tracy Fullerton: Play is movement within constraints.

Jane Friedhoff: I tend to think about play as existing within a set of confines or constraints, and thinking about creative ways to kind of move in, out, and around them, to subvert them, to take advantage of them.

Sam Roberts: One of the things that lets us immerse totally into play is when we know there is a safety net there, right? It’s like, you’re not happy to jump from a height unless you know something below can catch you, right? Play is a trust exercise. Close your eyes and fall backwards and hope that they catch you.

Alioune N’gom: Play is putting yourself in a situation that is not reality and interacting with other people in a situation that is not necessarily a one-to-one match with reality.

Everett Phillips: Play is laughter. That would be my one-word answer.

Duke DeVilling: Play and sports just go hand in hand.

Kristen Skillman: Relaxing and it takes your mind off of the more serious things.

Randall Roberts: It’s almost like meditation with a smile. It’s chasing after that, it’s chasing after bliss.

Amanda Penny: Play is imaginative because you get to put your own way to everything and it’s just kind of creative!

Courtney Price: Play doesn’t necessarily create anything. It isn’t necessary. It’s funny because I think it’s so necessary. [laughter]

Stephanie Barish: Play is my favorite thing.

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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.

LEARN MORE

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.

Play Digest: Agustina Woodgate and Erwin Wurm

Posted on by Eugenia Bell

Hot dogs and teddy bears—more serious light-heartedness from our final two Playtime artists.

Agustina Woodgate makes no secret of the origin material of her “rugs,” but it may take a few moments among them to decipher, so complex and consistent are the patterning and craft.

The cast-off plush toys she uses for her rug works, she believes, “represent memories of their owner[s].” While people have distinct and deep connections to stuffed animals form their childhoods, Woodgate looks to “deliver an alternative memory object that displays and references personal histories.” (The “play” aspect in Woodgate’s work is not limited to stuffed animals alone. In 2013, she painted a giant hopscotch board in Miami and made building blocks from human hair.)

As an immigrant to Miami, much of Woodgate’s work is by definition political. Her most recent endeavor is an online radio station dedicated to an idea she refers to as “techno-immigrants”—those who are connected by technology to what facilitates their moves, to their families back home, to the networks that keep them stable and able.

Erwin Wurm, known for the One-Minute Sculptures that so captured visitors’ imaginations at Playtime this winter, says: “My work speaks about the whole entity of a human being: the physical, the spiritual, the psychological and the political,” which can easily be seen in the interactions people have with the works, which he has been staging for more than twenty years.

Wurm is taking the show on the road this summer—or at least as far as New York’s stunning Brooklyn Bridge Park—where his work Curry Bus will be serving New Yorker’s and tourists alike free hot dogs from a mustard-yellow, vaguely hot dog bun-shaped vehicle. Don’t like hot dogs? If you’re in South Korea, the Dumpling Car will be present at a large retrospective this spring.

 

(Image credit: Courtesy of Spinello Projects, photo by Joshua Aronson.)

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.

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