Tag: Hubbub

Week 158

It’s the end of week 158 and I am sat at a table in what will soon be the new Dutch Game Gar­den. On the fourth floor builders are putting final touch­es to the stu­dio Fource­Labs and Hub­bub will be shar­ing. I am on the first floor, with a gor­geous view of the Neude square which is the scene of much sum­mery activ­i­ty. The city as theatre.

This week has been main­ly about project Ebi. We kicked off a sec­ond iter­a­tion, after wrap­ping up basic func­tion­al­i­ty in iter­a­tion 0, this one is about adding the game spe­cif­ic stuff. Most of our ener­gies so far have gone into design­ing a good rule­set. We had a break­through on wednes­day and recon­vened today to for­mal­ize those ideas, and fill in the blanks. We now have enough mate­r­i­al to push for­ward on design, copy and engi­neer­ing. It’s that stage of that project where the shape of things starts to become clear and you can’t wait for it to mate­ri­al­ize so that you can touch it, use it, play with it.

In a short while I’ll be strolling through the cen­tre of Utrecht to the cur­rent and soon to be old Dutch Game Gar­den, for a farewell par­ty. We’ve had plen­ty of good times in Driehar­ingstraat 6, let’s give the old build­ing one more bash.

Week 152

This was the last week of my stay in Copen­hagen. Com­ing Sun­day it’s back to the Nether­lands. As usu­al leav­ing feels bit­ter­sweet. There cer­tain­ly things I’ll miss about being here, not in the least our love­ly apart­ment in one of the city’s nicest neigh­bor­hoods. And the many great cafés. But there’s a lot to be said for being in Utrecht, too. I have so much stuff going on there, it got a bit tir­ing towards the end man­ag­ing it all remotely.

So this week…

  • I went over to Malmö to meet with Dan Gär­den­fors at TAT and with Jonas Löw­gren at MEDEA. In both cas­es there is rea­son for fol­low-up; it looks like there might be a TAT-Hub­bub con­cept video about per­va­sive play and mobile UIs on the hori­zon, and I might come back to MEDEA to do some teaching.
  • I had a marathon Skype ses­sion on wednes­day. Talk­ing to all my stu­dents who are now ner­vous­ly prep­ping for their mid-terms. As well as ses­sions with Clau­dia and Karel in prepa­ra­tion of the urban games fes­ti­val in Lei­d­sche Rijn we’re assist­ing with.
  • I lec­tured (and ran a lit­tle playtest of an audi­ence game I’ve been tin­ker­ing with) at CIID. Look for a full report and anno­tat­ed slides at the Hub­bub blog, soon.

And now, it’s time to do a few more touristy things and then pack, and head home. The next wee­knote will be Dutch fla­vored again.

Week 142

I am sat on the couch at home typ­ing this. iTunes is on shuf­fle (some Bur­ial at the moment). I’ve just had a Bi-Fi snack sausage (a guilty plea­sure) and some ice tea. I was kind of hun­gry, but now I’m ok.

Last week was­n’t as crazy as many recent ones have been. Still pret­ty busy, with some work in the evenings etc. But the pace is low­er. That’s a nice change.

Today I sort of wrapped up project Tako. Sort of, because although I’ve deliv­ered what was this pro­jec­t’s aim, it is part of some­thing much larg­er. So we’re already mak­ing plans for phase two. Any­way, I’ve pub­lished an anno­tat­ed deck of slides to the pro­jec­t’s par­tic­i­pants weigh­ing in at 100+. It describes con­cepts for play­ful stuff that can be added to the pro­grams of ten of Utrecht’s major cul­tur­al events. It also describes a metagame that can be used to tie it all togeth­er. The response to it has been good so now the next step is to actu­al­ly pro­duce a selec­tion of these con­cepts, which is super exciting.

I start­ed the week with a long dri­ve to the West­land for a slight­ly over­due eval­u­a­tion of Mega Mon­ster Bat­tle Are­na. Dario Fo, Daniël and myself agree it would be awe­some to put on an improved ver­sion of the show at oth­er venues because it real­ly is some­thing spe­cial, more peo­ple should see it. If you have sug­ges­tions for a suit­able event or venue, let me know.

On wednes­day I made a last minute deci­sion to drop by the great TrouwAms­ter­dam again for an evening on maps as art and new car­tog­ra­phy tech­niques. Amongst oth­er’s Sarah van Sons­beeck was there to talk about her work. She men­tioned the project Alper and I did with her, which I found flat­ter­ing. The evening’s pro­gram con­tained a love­ly range of the super-artis­tic to the very applied and the hyper-ana­log to the pure­ly dig­i­tal. Good stuff. It reminds me of the fact that I want to do Hub­bub games that involve maps in some way.

In between, I’ve been bang­ing away at designs for Layar. It’s inter­est­ing to expe­ri­ence the rhythm of idea diver­gence and con­ver­gence in a project. It’s like ebb and flow. This week was def­i­nite­ly char­ac­ter­ized by a new wave of diver­gence, which means scram­bling to cap­ture all that emerges. Next week we’ll need to bring it all togeth­er again and focus things. Ebb and flow.

iTunes has start­ed play­ing an Inter­pol song now. I think I might grab some crisps after I’ve post­ed this.

What the hubbub is

There’s some move­ment over at the web­site for my new ven­ture. I men­tioned Hub­bub before: it is a design stu­dio I am set­ting up for phys­i­cal, social games that are played in pub­lic places. We hope to address social issues and the like using these games.

Recent­ly…

Today's harvest

Also, we’ll be doing some­thing play­ful and run­ning a work­shop at the upcom­ing Game in the City con­fer­ence in Amersfoort. 

To stay post­ed on Hub­bub devel­op­ments, fol­low us on Twit­ter or sign up for our newslet­ter. There’s good old RSS as well, of course.

Work now so you can play later

There’s a lot going on at the Leapfrog stu­dio, which explains at least in part why things have gone qui­et around here. How­ev­er, I want­ed to take the time to alert you to some upcom­ing events that might be of interest.

An urban game in the Rotterdam city center

On Sun­day Sep­tem­ber 27 around 50 young peo­ple will play an urban game I designed for Your World — Rot­ter­dam Euro­pean Youth Cap­i­tal 2009.1 It is part of a two-day event called Change Your World, which enables groups of youth to set up a new ‘move­ment’ with finan­cial sup­port and advice from pro­fes­sion­als. You might want to hang around the Rot­ter­dam city cen­ter dur­ing the day, to wit­ness what is sure to be an inter­est­ing spec­ta­cle. More info should show up soon enough at the Your World web­site.

A pervasive game in the Hoograven neighborhood of Utrecht

Around the same time, from Sep­tem­ber 18 to Octo­ber 11, you’ll be able to play Kop­pelkiek in the Hoograven area of Utrecht. This is a game I’ve cre­at­ed for the Dutch Design Dou­ble pro­gram.2 To play, you take pho­tos of your­self with oth­ers in a range of sit­u­a­tions and upload them to the game’s web­site. It’s designed to sub­tly per­me­ate your dai­ly life. With the help of our play­ers we’re hop­ing to cre­ate a col­lec­tion of pho­tos that pro­vide a unique look into life in the neigh­bor­hood. Do join in if you’re in the area. Also, we’ll have a playtest on Sep­tem­ber 16. If you’re inter­est­ed in play­ing a round or two, drop me a line.3

Data visualizations of silence

I’m wrap­ping up some data visu­al­iza­tion work I’ve done for the artist Sarah van Sons­beeck.4 Sarah’s work revolves (amongst oth­er things) around the con­cept of silence. Alper and I took a dataset she gen­er­at­ed dur­ing a few of her ‘silence walks’ using a GPS track­er and a sound lev­el meter and cre­at­ed a num­ber of sta­t­ic visu­al­iza­tions in Pro­cess­ing. Some of the out­put can be seen at the exhi­bi­tion Een Dijk van een Kust. More will prob­a­bly be on dis­play at anoth­er occa­sion. Also, I’ve learnt some new tricks that I intend to share here soon.

What else, what else…

  • I’m still mean­ing to write some­thing up about the work that went into Mega Mon­ster Bat­tle Are­na™ but it will have to wait. I attend­ed two of the three shows and enjoyed both through­ly. There’s some pho­tos up at the opera’s web­site.
  • We’re in the process of fin­ish­ing up the This hap­pened – Utrecht #3 videos. Once they’re all done we’ll add them to the event’s page on the .org site along with the slides. Plan­ning for our fourth event has already start­ed. Mark your cal­en­dar for Octo­ber 26 and sub­scribe to our newslet­ter so you won’t miss the reg­is­tra­tion’s opening.
  • And final­ly, I’m slow­ly but sure­ly giv­ing shape to a new ven­ture which will focus on the use of play in pub­lic space to effect social change. Its name is Hub­bub. The crazy design­ers at BUROPONY are devel­op­ing a sweet brand iden­ti­ty and a first place­hold­er site is up. Stay tuned for more news on that.

That’s about it for now, thanks for your atten­tion. I promise to pro­vide con­tent with more meat and less self-pro­mo­tion in upcom­ing posts. 

  1. Karel Mil­lenaar, game design­er extra­or­di­naire at Fource­Labs and a fel­low res­i­dent of the Dutch Game Gar­den, has helped me out on this one. [↩]
  2. I’ve asked Tij­men Schep of Pinep­ple­Jazz, NetNiet.org and the new Utrecht medi­al­ab to be my part­ner on this one. [↩]
  3. Around the same time a lot of oth­er inter­est­ing stuff relat­ed to design and soci­ety will be going on, such as the third edi­tion of Utrecht Man­i­fest, the bien­ni­al for social design. [↩]
  4. I was turned on to this gig by the ubiq­ui­tous Alper Çuğun. [↩]