Methods

Play

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Engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose.
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To use play as a method to subvert one’s expectations means: to create activity for enjoyment and recreation, rather than for a serious or practical purpose.

The project examples that use play are usually ‘active’ projects. They make use of the sense of body movement, and motivate you to move around. Often an element of imagination is added to the project, which creates ‘other worlds’, where you can relax, play and follow different rules and conventions. While these projects usually have no serious purpose - they are there for enjoyment and recreation - it could lead to reflection on daily routines.

One way to provoke this activity is to use odd shapes and colour contrasts. This leads to installation art, which is art that has to be walked through to fully experience it. Or to relational art, which is art that engages in interpersonal relationships, where the artist and its artwork are viewed as the catalyst of relationships. A good example here is Carsten Höller’s ‘Test Site’, an installation that tests the influence of slides in daily life. Carsten calls it ‘a device for experiencing an emotional state that is a unique condition, somewhere between delight and madness’. Carsten provides the possibility to slide, if you do or not, does not matter, as only the presence of the slide already changes how people interact with each other in the this formal situation.