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Exploring the Playfulness of PlaceA Case Study of Sydney, Australia

Kyle MoorePhD Candidate, Department of Media and Communications Twitter: @kylejmoore

Crossroads in Cultural StudiesSydney, Australia17 December 2016

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Towards a Theorisation of ‘Situated Play’ – Urban play as a

culturally specific practice that operates at the intersection of global and local.

– Play is subject to sociocultural and material circumstance outside of the game.

– Draws from HCI (situated actions) and cultural studies of games (situated gaming).

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Historical and Contemporary Approaches – Historical approaches to urban play

– de Souza e Silva and Hjorth (2009)– Stevens (2007)– Flanagan (2009)

– Emphasis on ‘remediating’ critical engagements with urban space e.g. – Flâneur (urban wanderer) – Derive (unplanned journey)

– Context of these two; not strictly play, although informed by in some ways.

– Ideas of ‘leisure’ tied with urban mobility– Becomes a question of politics, of accessibility, of

sociocultural constructions of space and consumption

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Playable and Playful Cities

– Art movements that seek to ‘open’ the urban to civic and social interactions

– Questions of culture and questions of play. Where is culture produced and how is play performed?

– Playable city as historically situated amongst ideas that emerge from New Games Movement

– E.g. civic modes of urban mobility with emphasis on the social

– New technologies allow for new modes of performance.

– These forms of play are ultimately performative– Reliant on ‘open’ urban spaces. Often city centres

and plays of traditional cultural production (at least in case of Australia)

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Ingress and Pokémon Go

– Objects of study– Ingress (2012)

– Communities in and around Sydney, Australia

– Pokémon Go (2016)– Field testers– Launch of public app

and viral adoption – Ethnographic study of

Ingress communities– Syd Resistance Agents

Feb-June 2016

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Playing in Public: Sydney Australia

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Playing in Public: Sydney Australia

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Mapping Art: Curation and Labour

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Art, Play, and Situating Localities

– Cultural heritage, history, developing a ‘playful’ locality – playing with heritage and our understanding of the (sub)urban.

– Observations from Sydney: sites of traditional ‘cultural’ production e.g. Opera House and Museums, key sites of urban play.

– Home to not only Ingress (map and events), Pokémon Go, but also other forms of playful urban mobility such as Vivid Light festival.

– Outside of urban centres, suburbs curate specific cultural heritage and production. From street art in those proximate to city centre to war memorials in parks in locations furthest from city centre.

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Conclusion: Politics of Public Play

– Situated play helps to understand now only how play alters sociocultural and material components of the city.

– Play may be subversive, a mode of consumption, a form of labour, a unifying practice, depending on given situation.

– In short, play is political– Public play deals with and alters existing politics

surrounding urban accessibility and everyday forms of urban mobility.

– In the context of Australia, localities are tied to built environment and performance of cultural heritage.

– As with all locations, issues of accessibility and openness of public spaces impact politics of game play