Digital Arts 2: Research

In this session we got more of an introduction to the Module requirements and started to explore the topic of ‘play’. Below are my notes and ideas from the session and my independent research.

On one of the slides from the power point, there was a list of people who have studied ‘play’, I wrote down their names and the key quote from them. I researched each of them and found Brene Brown’s ideas particularly interesting. He wrote an article called ‘The Power of Vulnerability’ and within this he talks about 5 wholehearted behaviours that promote a healthy mind and body, which I made notes on. I also looked at a couple other people including Carrie Brummer and Tim Brown. The notes on all of these can be found below:

In the session we had an activity where we spoke in group about ‘play’ and answered a series of questions. I made notes and took some recordings of our discussion. I then presented our ideas and answers in this mind map. This was a helpful way to get us to start engaging with the topic of play and thinking about our own perceptions of the topic.

Prompted by the session, I did some subject and contextual research. I looked at the definition of ‘play’, the differences between learning and play, the scientific benefits of play and play for adults. All the research and ideas are below:

I wanted to pick a famous and popular game to study as board games are one of the first types of ‘play’ that I thought of during our group discussion and is something I’m considering basing my project around. I chose to research Monopoly and found it has an interesting history, starting out as an educational tool and later becoming a game. This is a good example of the fundamental connection between play and learning at all ages.

I found an article by Dr. Brown titled ‘play personalities’ which thought was an interesting idea so I made some notes of the 8 ‘play personalities’ and what each one means.

To get a comprehensive understand of what it means to ‘play’, I researched the different types of play for both adults and children. I used Bob Hughes’s article about the 16 different types of play.

I made a list of different objects of ‘play’. Objects of ‘play’ is something we talked about in our group discussion so I wanted to make a list of all the different objects and activities I could think of. This was a good way to start generating ideas for the project. To help me I divided the objects into creative/making, games, activities/outdoors and other.

I also researched artists that explore ‘play’ either through their theme, approach or aesthetic. Below is a list of artists whose work I liked and found inspiring for the project. I made a note of the type of art they create and have included images from the artists mentioned.