Tag: Move It

Week 133

We (Marinka, Evert and I) wrapped up the Move It project on friday with great success. I spent the day in a theater watching 24 concept videos of new street sports. The one that scored the highest was also my favorite; a team sport that involves bouncing a ball off the sides of an alley, includes the referee as a bouncing surface and allows the audience to participate by batting balls that leave the play area back into field. It’s called Bounce Ball, check out the video on Vimeo.

This week I’m spending most of my time acting as mentor on another project at the Utrecht School of the Arts (at the theatre faculty, to be exact). First-year students from all courses there (acting, writing, stage design, etc.) have one week to put together a program that will be open to the public on friday. The project is titled Mount Everest and revolves around the theme of people going to extremes and transgressing limits (as mountaineers often do).

It’s nice spending this much time in the theatre faculty, since this is the new venue for the 2010 series of This happened – Utrecht events. I’m getting good vibes from the physical space, I think it’s a great fit for our thing. I’ve met with Ianus and Alexander to make further plans for the next edition (which is planned for 22 february). Most of the program is taken care of so we’re on schedule for making the usual announcements and sending out invitations to the guest list.

I’ve also met with Karel to discuss project Unagi. This is a small game design event – an experiment really – that was born from the many discussions Karel and I tend to have over our regular dinners. The goal of Unagi is to create a place where Dutch game designers can meet, and where we can get a feel for what the state of the art of the discipline is. It also involves food.

I’m also slowly but surely getting up to speed with project Tako. Hopefully this week I’ll manage to plan most of the meetings that I’ll be having with the people behind some of the city of Utrecht’s major cultural events.

Last but not least, tomorrow I’ll be assessing the group project I’ve been mentoring at the Utrecht School of the Arts’ graduate school for art and technology since september. Also, on friday, the group will present their work to Jussi Holopainen of Nokia Research Center, who is the project’s commissioner. The project is titled EcoWay, and revolves around the design for a playful experience for companies that want to encourage their employees to commute in a greener manner. Here’s a photo of the group with their prototype. Look closely and you’ll notice it includes a herbarium with proper live plants.

This will be a bittersweet ending to a challenging but rewarding teaching experience. What most stands out for me with this project is how a proper team was formed from what started out as a collective of individuals thanks to a hands-on, thinking-by-doing approach.

Week 132

I’m taking up the challenge Matt Webb posted in his last weeknote of the year 2009 and will be posting weeknotes of my own here for the foreseeable future. You can expect stuff about design work I do at Hubbub, teaching at the Utrecht School of the Arts and perhaps bits about This happened and other side endeavors.

So this is week 132 of my freelance career. I started on July 1st 2007, which coincided with a move to Copenhagen (I’ve moved back to Utrecht since).

Most of this week is taken up by a workshop – titled Move It – I’m running together with Evert Hoogendoorn and Marinka Copier at the Utrecht School of the Arts. All first year students of the games and interaction courses are participating, around 130 in all. That’s a crazy number, it’s really taxing, but also a lot of fun. Lots of good vibes when we’re all in the same room. The assignment we’ve given them is to design a new sports experience. It should take place in the centre of Utrecht, and they should not only design the play of the sport, but also the experience of the audience, the referee, bookmaker, etc. We kicked off on monday,1 today was open Q&A, tomorrow will be a mid-way review and on friday they’ll present the final game in the form of a three-minute video. There’ll be 24 videos in total, all posted to this Vimeo group. I’m really looking forward to the end results.

Other than that I’m hoping to get started properly with a consulting project I’ve codenamed Tako.2 It’s about exploring opportunities for playful additions to the programs of some of Utrecht’s major cultural events. The project’s commissioned by the city of Utrecht. I’ll talk more about it once the work is underway.

What else… This being the new year, there’s plenty of receptions. Today I attended one at the Utrecht School of the Arts. Tomorrow I’ll be at the monthly lunch organised by the Dutch Game Garden3 which’ll probably involve some new year shenanigans.

I was also doing the obligatory financial admin that comes with the start of a new month, a new quarter and a new year (thank god there’s nothing special related to this being a new decade). Invoicing, that sort of thing.

Also, I sent out a message to some of my old friends in Copenhagen, since I’m planning a six-week stay there in spring. I’m hoping to do some work there. Have heard back from a few already, so that’s encouraging.

There’s also more than the usual amount of meetings to talk about potential new projects. All quite interesting and exciting, who knows what’ll come of those.

So that’s the first weeknote out of the way. It’s interesting how doing this increases my awareness of all the stuff that’s going on. It’s hard not to feel a little overwhelmed. I hope it’s of some interest to you though.

Onwards!

  1. I ran a brief ideation session using a design game developed by Jussi Holopainen et al. at the Nokia Research Center. [↩]
  2. I’ve gotten into the habit of naming new projects after Japanese seafood. [↩]
  3. Which is where I have my studio. [↩]