‘Playful Identities’ research blog

This BBC article “The power of play on the internet” is interesting in the light of our overarching “Playful Identities” research question: How do new (group) identities appear or how are old identities articulated and experienced? What is the role of digital media in this proces? And how can this be understood as “playful”?

The claim is made that online social networking is a type of game (not really a new idea). Impicitly it is suggested that gaming is the form of contemporary social bonding. Additionally, the relevance of online gaming for “real life” is underlined. This further undermines the old dichotomy between an isolated cyberspace versus real life as two separate domains. Interesting as well to me is the fact that there are reputation systems built into these social networking games. These become mechanisms to enforce reciprocity, which is an important term in theories about gift exchange (Mauss).

Some interesting quotes from the article:

Game design and social networks are merging into one of the most persuasive forces on the net. That assertion was made by a string of speakers at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.

“Social networking is a game in and of itself,” explained Jennifer Pahlka, co-chair of the conference.

….

“Social networks offer a revolutionary way for people to play with friends and communities that have meaningful value to them in their real life,”

….

“Logging in and playing with strangers was exciting when the internet was new but the modern web is personal and social and it is clear that the internet is being used for social purposes to connect people rather than isolate them.”

….

“We build up these reputation systems with levels and rankings just as you would if it was a game and by applying these gaming principles it helps build these thriving successful communities.”

Shoot-n- Share is a documentary made by two young students at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, Lieke van Pruijssen and Bieke Versloot. It is a film about the relation five inhabitants of Rotterdam have with their mobile phone. More specifically: how they use the camera on their mobile phone. The film was shown a while ago at a filmfestival in Groningen, and in Rotterdam April 28, 2008.

The film is a mixture of documentary following a number of ‘Rotterdammers’ an their mobile cam use as well and interviewing the, as well as a showcase of the mobile phone movies and photographs itself that are made by them. This is done quite ingeniously, by blending the two together in such a way that you get a good view both from the ‘real life’ perspective and the ‘virtual media-perspective.

So what kind of people are portrayed in the film? The first are Thom and Osama, two young guys (both 16) who film their daily movements in the city, go to weird places and shoot themselves fooling around a bit, and upload their material to Youtube. See the following Youtube accounts: Osama (osama015); Thom (jump266) ; and together they operate under the nick osamathom1991.

Then there is a young mother Annemarie (24 years old) and her daughter. The mother makes little clips of for instance her daughter and her singing and dancing together, and shares these with friends and family online.

There is Hans, a guy of about 30 years old who mainly takes photos of things he sees in the city in an artistic fashion.

And finally an older man, Cor Been, age 75, who has filmed the entire process of the construction of his new apartment building to which he is moving.

There are a couple of things I found really interesting about this film:

Different age, different use
First of all, the film shows how people from different ages do very different things with their mobile phone camera. Osama and Tom went for the kicks and sought out the ‘dangerous’ and exiting urban places they normally wouldn’t go or weren’t suppose to be. The young mother did it in a very social way to share her life with her daughter with other; the 30 year old guy made all kinds of photographs of the city in a very aesthetic way; the old man used film to get accustomed to his new habitat, as a kind of narrative medium to incorporate the new into his life.

Mobile film as an emerging genre
What kind of new pictorial language is emerging through the use of the mobile phone for photo and film? It is a radical first person perspective; a 3D view of the world, the camera does not only pan from left to right but also up and down (one’s feet!); movement while shooting instead of stills; no cuts; position of the filmer in his own film; enactment in front of camera: it’s is not acting as if it is real but made absolutely clear that it is acting in full awareness of the presence of a camera.

Experience of multiple places at the same time (moving in hybrid space)
The two young guys were making a film while sneaking into a building (hotel?) they clearly weren’t supposed to be. While prowling through the corridors and pushing elevator buttons in a seemingly spontaneous way, all of a sudden one of them yelled: “This is certainly going to be on Youtube!”. This seems to indicate that these kids are adding an extra dimension to their physical world, namely concurrently imagining a digital world. They interweave their here and now experience of what they are doing in physical space with an added dimension of presenting it later elsewhere on a digital platform.

Social aspects of sharing: niche vs. platform
The young mother was sharing films and photos of her and her daughter with friends via online platforms (Youtube, Hyves). There is something very social about creating content. A new sociality? Or sharing as age-old ritual (gifting)? Only within small circle? But interestingly she chooses a platform that is accesible to everyone. This raises questions about how people want to express themselves, either to small niches vs. sharing broadly.

Experiencing city space through the mobile phone camera
Filming the city while being on the move adds an extra reflexive dimension to this mobility. First it adds another lense in front of you, a layer of mediatrion in a (new) visual movie language. And second it enables you to look back almost immediately on what you have just experienced and how you have captured this. The experience of a city may change through this additional reflexive layer. It enables you to distrance yourself from your own immediate experience by viewing it again through the eyes of a bystander, like an being an audience to your own captured experience.

(thanks Bieke for the pictures, additional info, and small corrections!)

Sad as it is, the Joran van der Sloot and Natalee Holloway case has a funny side to it. And the mobile phone plays a big role in it. More than half of the Dutch population watched the program by Peter R. de Vries on Sunday the 3rd of Februari 2008 about the confessions Joran van der Sloot made in front of hidden cameras. Shortly after the broadcast, SMS messages started circulating:

‘Lig hier op het strand met een wijf te ketsen maar in één keer deed ze niks meer! Kan je ff komen met een boot, een echte vriend doet dat toch? Mag jij mijn nieuwe gympen!’

which translates into something like:

I am on the beach humping this chick, all of a sudden she stops moving! Can you come over with a boat, a real friend would do such a thing? You can have my new sneakers!

Free newspaper De Pers quotes this joke from a barkeeper from The Hague. Another free newspaper Metro quotes the exact same joke from young people in Amsterdam. In trying to come up with a snappy answer, people refer in a similar vein to the show everybody has seen:

Sorry, geen tijd, zit op Aruba. Bel anders Daury ff.

(Sorry, no time, I am on Aruba. Call Daury.)

According to De Pers, one of the largest operators in the Netherlands Vodafone reports a remarkable increase in text messages after the Peter R. de Vries show.

Interestingly, broadcast mass media content (which still is able to reach the largest number of people) seeps into ‘narrowcast’ communication media like the mobile phone. Yet the mobile phone too is used in a chain-like broadcast medium. People send a message like this on to multiple other people.

Also, the mobile phone has become part of the repertoire of media people have to express themselves in a joking way. It has typical connotations of being non-serious and playful (especially amongst young people).

[Interesting by the way that Wikipedia.org automatically forwards the entry "Joran van der Sloot" to "Natalee Holloway"... What politics are behind that choice?]

sources: depers.nl and metronieuws.nl (date: Feb. 7 2008)

picture: depers.nl

Yesterday I went to Urbanfest ‘07 in “Dreampark” Ancol, north Jakarta. This festival, organized for the first time, had lots of contemporary culture such as Indie music and hiphop, street games and sports, graffiti, harajuku & cosplay competition, modded bikes, scooter stunting and more. The Ancol website has the full program (basically a whole list of activities with the word urban in it, haha!)

The general impression I got was that this festival was an experiment to create a setting in which new modern urban identities can be explored, partly influenced by global culture, partly localized and typically Indonesian. I enjoyed it a lot!

Many people used their cameras, DV cams, and handphones to capture a sense of ‘being there’.

Some interesting quotes from an article in Jakarta Post:

“As youth, we present something new, something different from the mainstream. That’s what people call the indie spirit. Now a group is considered indie, maybe later it’s not indie,” Jimmy, a member of The Upstairs [one of the bands playing], told a press conference Wednesday [that must have been August 22, 2007].
…
IKJ Rector [Jakarta Arts Institute, one of the organizing parties] and noted dance choreographer Sardono W. Kusumo said the festival was part of efforts to give young artists space to display urban cultures far removed from those found in the nation’s countryside.

“We are open to and ready for even “the craziest” ideas,” Sardono told the conference.

Sardono said there were no “genuine” Indonesian cultures, since the nation’s history has long been open to foreign influences.
…
Organizers said the festival, carrying the slogan “All You Can Act!!!”, are aimed at promoting freedom of expression in the face of rising conservatism in much of the country.

Some of the grafitti art at Urbanfest ‘07.

Guys doing motorbike stunts

East meets west when a hiphop group from Yogyakarta invites a dangdut singer on stage for a jam at Urbanfest ‘07.

Japanese cultural influences: harajuku & cosplay competition at Urbanfest ‘07.

Today, 17 August 2007, Indonesia celebrated the 62th year of independence from Dutch colonial rule. Although my 3rd time in Indonesia, it’s the first time I am in the country during hari kemerdekaan (freedom day). A great day to do some fieldwork on (playful) identity construction ☺.

Together with Lisa & Dini, two girls from my rumah kos, I went to Monas (national monument) in the morning. Under a blistering sun we walked to the Istana Negara (state palace), just north of Taman Merdeka (freedom square). Along the road we saw military units parading. At the palace, young people from all current 33 provinces were present, wearing regional ethnic costumes, featuring on pictures, and busy taking pictures themselves.





Ethnic and national identities at Istana Negara. Mobile devices all over the place to capture “unity in diversity” (Indonesia’s national motto). Tradition and modernity go hand in hand.

After that, Lisa and I went to kampung Melayu, one of the poorer areas in Jakarta. Some friends of her organize a three-day series of festivities in the neighborhood of bukit duri, as part of an effort to make freedom day a real people’s festival. All kinds of traditional games here, vaguely reminding me of the kind of ludic activities that take place on Dutch “koninginnedag” (queen’s day). These kids compete to run three slippery eels from one bucket into the other as quick as possible.



Eel race in kampung Melayu. In the background an activist painting claiming the rights of poor people in Indonesia. The proclamation in the painting reads “Children of poor families are the responsibility of the state. Children at the edge [referring also literally to bukit duri’s location near the Ciliwung riverside] are not sewer rats!”. The painting is part of a campaign in the neighborhood to voice social and economic awareness and identity, as the slums are planned to be cleared due to recurrent floodings.


Pre-paid card infrastructure has penetrated deep into the kampung!

Meanwhile, a bit further uphill, young guys try to climb the greasy pole, in the hope of getting one of the handphones dangling from the top as a reward! I somehow got the sense that in this image, some central notions in my research (identity, play and the mobile phone) come together and lose some of their slipperiness…



Play in front of the quarter’s main Mesjid (mosque) on national freedom day: who wins the mobile phone?

In talking about identity, I feel like adding a more personal note. Today has also been a day to consider my own history and relation to Indonesia. A week back or so I was in a book shop at Taman Ismael Marzuki, and picked up a Soekarno (Indonesia’s first president) biography by Bob Hering. Paging through the book, I noticed my great grandfather figures as one of the prime informants. He apparently was very well-acquainted with many of the key figures who founded Indonesia, and who are commemorated today. From the scarce stories, I know he spoke several indigenous languages fluently and was part of the so called ‘ethical’ movement which tried to reform colonial rule. Yet still part of Dutch colonial system… 62 Years after Indonesian independence, I cannot help but feel both continuity, by temporarily living here and becoming close to this country, as well as rupture, for I am here in a completely different situation and role, as the paths of Holland and Indonesia have split.

“Take fun seriously” - great motto for our ‘playful identities’ project !

Taken at transit busway Dukuh Atas, Jakarta, August 15 2007.

A week or two ago (just before the migration of this blog the a new server) I walked past an outdoors advertisement in Amsterdam, near where I live. It is an ad for the Dutch Open Air Museum in Arnhem. It says “Vrij als vroeger - Even terug naar de jaren ‘60″ (something like “Free as once before - briefly back to the ’60s“).

(click to enlarge)

A brief look at their website tells me it’s an exhibition about leisure time in the 60s. What made me take a snapshot of this was that the picture shows a mobile phone being crushed by what appears a miller’s stone, or a giant tractor tire, I don’t know. So this advertisement basically says that freedom is to be without the mobile phone. It plays upon popular opinion that the mobile phone, handy is it may be, is also a burden and a restraint on freedom. Crush your phone and you’ll be free again :).

What strikes me now as I am writing is the addition of the word “Even..” (briefly, or just a little moment) in the subtitle. It suggests the possibility of temporarily escaping modern day pressures (the obligations imposed by the mobile phone) when visiting this open air museum. Why would we want/need to do so? Why go to a museum for this? And what is good about a temporary solution? I mean, nobody is really going to crush his mobile? I think the ad tries to appeal to the possibility of imagining and actually visiting a time and place when things where not so complicated. The museum then creates a temporary playground for our imagination. We can actually undergo the experience of living an ideal simple life, albeit temporarily.

And here’s another advertisement I found on their website, burning a remote control:

Below some notes I made today at the Symposium Playing the Urban.

Symposium Playing the Urban @Balie 31 maart 2007

http://www.debalie.nl/artikel.jsp?podiumid=media&articleid=102445

PROGRAM

13-14h Mobile Learning Game Kit

Speaker: Jan Simons (Associate Professor New Media Studies, University of Amsterdam)

14-15h PlastiCity: A Game for Urban Planning

Speakers: Mathias Fuchs (Senior Lecturer, Programme Leader in Creative Technology, University of Salford) and Steve Manthorp (Special Project Manager, Bradford)

15h30-16u30 Logo Parc (Jan van Eyck Academy)

Speakers: Logo Parc (Daniël van der Velden, Katja Gretzinger, Matthijs van Leeuwen, Matteo Poli, Gon Zifroni)

This symposium was organized by fellow TKCers from Maastricht & Amsterdam “Transformations in Perception and Participation: Digital Games”.

———————– 

legenda: 

> = my remarks, thoughts, etc.

[Skipped presentation1]

PlastiCity is a game based on the Unreal Tournament engine (which is a first person shooter) and aims to be an aid in reconstructing/replan the awfully ugly city center of Bradford, UK. It is still in conceptual phase (read: no money yet). The aim is to put the game in public places like libraries, schools, etc.

Interesting quote: “the game is not designed to function as a designer tool for architects, but as a way of bringing planners, architects, local government officials and citizens together and be silly about redesigning the city.”

> Games may serve to bring people together in complex multi-party projects: games as a new kind of public sphere?

Another quote: “Every game has at some point a stage of chaos”.

> The rules are stretched, things are tried out, often deconstructed or even destroyed. Like identities that are being tried out and parts of it destroyed again.

Game should have ‘real life’ characters in it: not the usual beautiful yuppies you see in most architecture presentations. It should be more realistic. Also with rubbish and so on.

> Games as more realistic than other media in presenting or representing the world? What is realistic about programmed garbage?

One member of the audience experiences a kind of motion sickness while watching the demonstration of the game. She asks: what is the value of this game-speed to represent life-speed? The speakers explain the speed of the demo is set to slow: normal gamers would use at least 3x normal walking speed to move around… (which they briefly demonstrate). 

I brought up: this phenomenon is just like what the first train travelers experienced at 20 or 30 miles/hour: disorienting the senses. Every new technology brings its own experience of space & place & mobility. The train (and car) created a speeding up of travel, which made possible suburbs and the separation of home and work. The city was adapted to this new sense of the city. 

I asked: what then may be the influence of using games as tools for creating new cities for the way cities are actually build and experienced?

Answer: first person perspective of game may be an influence on perceiving the city; as well as the feeling of being in power, in control over your environment.

Another audience Q: what is actually game-like about this? There is no winning this game? There are few rules? Why play?

A: the attraction is the sense of empowerment & creativity players experience in playing the game, both in destroying and rebuilding the city.

> Could it be differentiated according to involvement? Game produces Erlebnissen, while (prolonged) play may produce Erfahrung.?

Game offers the idea of “unbuilding” the city, creating green environments again out of built space (land is cheap in Bradford, so not unrealistic).

> I like that idea of “unbuilding”, can it be applied to identity? “Unbuilding identity” as a way of undoing previous steps, deleting memories of these events in photos, video, text messages, phone numbers, etc. It is maybe a way of “unactualizing” identity, again extracting potentiality out of previous closures and actualizations.

> Such games are also used strategically and politically as part of ideas about the “creative city”. Games have become entangled in a larger discourse, they are being ’socially produced’ as young, modern, trendy, serious yet playful, appealing to people previously difficult to reach (young). If you want to be ‘now’ you have to do something with games.

Presentation 3 - LogoParc - was about the Amsterdam Zuidas and the way a kind of superficial ‘global architecture’ is created which is not related to the local (at least, that’s what I understood of the 2 very abstract talks). Designers at Jan van Eyk, Rietveld created a visual game-like critique on this environment. All facades of building and public space signage was removed, which created a sense of barren desolate landscape. Added were a number of large above-ground ’sewers’ connecting the Zuidas to other global places’ like Singapore, HongKong, Tokyo, New York, Paris, etc.

> I was a little annoyed by this whole talk: very highbrow theoretical critique on so-called placelessness of Zuidas, yet these offices and public spaces are filled with real people that drive their bikes back home at the end of a working day, people who make it a place, even if architecture has done little to embed it in local Amsterdam. 

Anybody can upload a short mobile phone clip to the website 15×15.org which is then displayed on the homepage for 15 seconds as one of 15 clips being shown simultaneously.

Interestingly, most people seem to film themselves and then put it online… Affirmation of the mobile phone as a tool for reflexive creation and expression of personal identity?

BTW: I am being eating by a purple Tyrannosaurus Rex…

(Thanks Tim for reminding me!)

Xen Mendelsohn from Xellular Identity has a very interesting interview with Nick Wright from Mobile Youth Trends. Nick is co-author of the mobileYouth 2006 report. Some of the good stuff:

- Young people don’t use their mobile phones ‘just for fun’ but also for serious matters: to say something about themselves and their relationships with other young people (self-expression).

- Branded goods play an important role in this self-expression.

- Texting is "a reaffirmation and a reminder that “I’m with you�?."

- Many young people feel depressed after a whole day without SMS. Some young people even go to rehab clinics for being "text-addicts"!

- The mobile phone has taken over the former position of cigarettes in offering a private space for unsupervised private communication. (And some studies suggest young people are smoking less and less because their money now goes to phone bills - MdL)

- Texting is attractive because the language can be deformed so that no adult can understand it. (This is also pointed out by Mitzuko Ito in an article (in Ling & Pedersen: 2005) about how traditional institutions like family and the classroom are being challenged by the mobile phone - MdL).

- The phone itself allow for personalization (wallpapers, ringtones, etc.) and enables young people to express themselves and "advertise their identity as part of their peer group." (> Interesting notion "advertizing identity" - we are all designing and branding ourselves to some extend).

- The basic social needs of young people are: "Social Networking, Communication, Status display, Personalisation and acting as a Behavioural Platform."

- Mobile operators realize too little of these characteristics of young people’s interaction with the mobile phone.

Read the whole interview here!