Sleek TIKI

University of Twente, Creative Technology Program

Last night, I experienced my first earthquake ever while attending the Game Developers Conference. It was felt like a small tremor, nothing extreme, but to me, it somehow fits the theme of what a person experiences at the Game Developer’s conference. As the foundation of the earth moved underneath, conceptual pedagogical foundations of Interactive design and game development began shifting earlier last weekend and has somehow culminated in parallel shifts at the Game Education keynote this morning. Sounds crazy and doesn’t make a lot of sense, I know, but let me explain;

Earlier last week, I attended the Creative Technologies: Pedagogy and Applications, Applications & Creative Projects presentation by Angelika Mader and Dennis Reidsma from the University of Twente, The Netherlands. These educators were presenting Interactive works that had inherent, eloquent qualities of Dutch design dating back to de stijl and the practitioners that founded the movement. During the talk, it was interesting to see what was and was not identified as design by the audience. Some of the design decisions that were integrated into the curriculum were an encouragement toward play, single value design and implicit design.

Just this morning, I had to decide what talk I wanted to attend at the Game Developers conference. To me, the decision was obvious for two reasons. The first, the title was in German and included the word “kunst”, translated to English means “Art.” It seems that to most game designers, the word art carries with it mixed emotions. However, my background is in art, so the word has very different implications for me. The second, the person giving the talk was Professor Brian Moriarty from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. I am very familiar with WPI from the time I spent living in Massachusetts and interacting with the IGDA community in the Boston area. I’ve also worked with WPI grads on a couple of projects. As such, I have an understanding of just how vital WPI is to the video game industry in Boston and at large and was excited to hear Professor Moriarty speak. In his presentation he showed Perlenspiel. A game engine he wrote to teach Digital Game Design 1. Professor Moriarty claimed he was searching for a “game clavier,” a common instrument that all game designers could use. Through this search, he developed Perlenspiel. I was so invigorated after the talk, and the association that were firing in my synapses, I had to immediately return to my hotel to write this blog post.

With this established, I would like to make clear that there were parallel undercurrents to both presentations that I want to bring to the fore. My purpose for this is to reveal to the reader my perception of how the parallel relationships emphasize the value in both presentations and highlight important topics in Interactive and game education.

The notion of play in early student projects was captivating because this is something that seems to be overlooked when students are faced with the monumental task of completing a degree to enter the workforce and when educators are faced with the daunting task paring down the multitude of skills, concepts and ideas associated with Interactive Media into a four year degree. However, the value in this notion of play was evident in the student works that presenting educators showed at the talk. For example, the students were using arduino boards to create physical computing project to communicate how many emails were in a person’s inbox. Though these assignments were not chocked full of content or aesthetic implications, they did give the students a few important skills for a young creative mind. The skills that I recognized were study and exploration through play. The idea of study or sketching is not a new idea to artists or designers, nor is the idea of exploration to find new ideas, processes or models. Both skills cultivate the young creative mind for more sophisticated pursuits later.

The notion of play was also apparent in Professor Moriarty’s keynote. The first assignment is student did was to use the Perlenspiel engine to make a “toy. “ Of course, a toy implies fun, which, just like the early assignments from the University of Twente, build technical and creative skills through a seemingly low consequence, but rigorous assignment that provides fertile ground for more creative exploration.

"It would seem that more than function itself, simplicity is the deciding factor in the aesthetic equation. One might call the process beauty through function and simplification." -Raymond Loewy

In the title of this post, I’ve invoked de Stijl, the Dutch art collective whose oft described utopian view of aesthetics carved away subject matter away into a pure form of abstraction and design sensibility. The collective focused on horizontal and vertical lines along with primary colors. The most recognizable being Piet Mondrian, the Dutch painter, who created abstract grids with the aforementioned visual elements. His aim was to reach the essence of beauty. Consequently, Professor Moriarty referenced the painter in his talk. At the Creative Technology symposium, de Stijl came to mind not because of the obvious cultural connection, but because of how the educators at the University of Twente were asking students to work toward an implicit integration of technology into the lives of people. This formed more of an implicit connection to de Stijl because the functionality seemed impact life in a way that was visually gentle. The notion of implicit design seemed to evolve from de Stijl because of how the beauty of the physical computing exrcises and later projects had an sensitivity toward simplicity and eloquence because information that formerly required the use of a screen, numbers and words is now communicated with shifts in hue from a refrigerator magnet or the change in light intensity that already exist in ones living space. A paring down of communication to it’s essence. Through this paring down of communication and integrating new information through a subtle shift in our existing lives instead of adding something to it, shows brilliance in design, Interactive or otherwise.

De Stijl is also apparent in Perlenspiel. The obvious connection is how Perlenspiel uses the grid and makes use of pixels or fields of color. Perhaps a more meaningful association is how the engine provdes students with a toolset so they can explore game design at it’s essence, but gives students the power to make games and identify theoretical game design pedagaogy with a slight learning curve.

I could keep going here, but I think this blog post is probably longer than it should be…

So, I’m signing off to get back to the conference.