Playful Highlights

Ta to Richard (Biff) Birkin and all at Pixel-Lab who made Playful happen. Highlights for me were:

Alfie Dennen & Paula Le Dieu

Their new project Bus-tops, and will create a london-wide networked canvas of LED displays on the roof’s of bus shelters that anyone can create art and games for. Bus-Tops was the winning entrant in the London arc of the Artists Taking The Lead fund, an Arts Council and London Olympics public art project.

Katy Lindemann

Behaviour change through play. Slides etc here.

Chris O’Shea

Shelter Air Guitar Championship 2008 from Chris O’Shea on Vimeo.

Who? Chris O’Shea sits somewhere between artist and designer, creating experiences that playfully challenge our perception of spaces and objects.

What? He will talk about creating installations full of charm, joy & wonder, including police lights, chickens, giant hands, air guitar, xray torches, spinning mirrors and music boxes.

Molly Ränge

storytelling, pedagogy and creation of learning contexts in a post digital age. http://www.fabel.se

Daniel Soltis

Who dat? Daniel Soltis is an interaction designer at Tinker.it! and a graduate of the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University. His work focuses on physical computing, large-scale interfaces, and playful interactions….urban and pervasive games.

GPS puzzle box made for a wedding present was a highlight.

Two reviews of the day here and here.

Feedback would be – lets walk the talk and make it more fun and interactive next time (eg Kaos Pilots and Sandpit/Hide & Seek), and make sure the non-gamers feel welcome in the first 10 minutes. Also consider getting someone along from Reggio Children if we could be so lucky.

Thank goodness for the Moral Compass folk (eg. Molly, Katy) who helped us work out the big Why? on it all… lots of smarts and loveliness in the room – people that could really make a difference in the world. Still not convinced online life/games are going to help us all to share and be happy. More mention of directing our efforts towards Climate Crisis solutions would also have been welcome.

Who would a keynote Moral Compass person be, with a playful style? Alain de Botton comes to mind…