A Playful Path
“I came to the realisation that it’s really not about games and it’s really not about play it’s all about playfulness”
Bernard De Koven, 1941-2018
As in so often the case, this started off life as a post about something totally different. I had been reading up on methods for categorising play, prompted by Costello’s Pleasure Framework which I’ve written about several times before. This led me to Korhonen et al.’s Playful Experience (PLEX) Framework (2009), later revised by Arrasvuori et al (2010). The PLEX framework builds on Costello and Edmonds’ Pleasure Framework, but expands the categories out from pleasure towards what they see as a more accurate way of categorising playfulness.
This framework is interesting, and deserves a post of its own. But while I was reading the papers surrounding these categorisation tools - tools for design and evalution - I found myself with a similar feeling to when I was reading much of the philosophical or ethnographic research on play - it just doesn’t feel playful. Part of the problem with these frameworks is that capturing and critically analysing the data from using these frameworks - any framework - of play limits the experience of play. To simplify play down to data, in fact, seems to me to undermine and undervalue play itself. This is an issue I have had from the start - so much of the writing on play seeks to scientifically or conceptually categorise play into taxonomies, tables and data that just doesn’t - to me at least - feel satisying, pleasureable, playful.
Perhaps this is what has drawn me to the work of playful writers such as Bernard De Koven and Corita. Both of them view playfulness as a given; for them, the problem is accessing and supporting it, encouraging people to remember how to play and be playful. As the title of her and Steward’s book implies, Corita believed that art - and by her extension, play - can’t be learned “except by the heart” (Loste, in Kent, 2014). De Koven believed that playfulness is a path, but a path you have to allow to surface, to allow our “innate playfulness to emerge” (Gray 2014). Like Corita, De Koven believed that playfulness is inherent, preexisting, almost unquestionable; we are all playful, and measuring playfulness is impossible and/or irrelevant. What De Koven suggests instead is that we must learn to engage with our playfulness, and let ourselves play, playfully:
“So when I talk and write about a Playful Path, I’m neither talking nor writing about how we can or should become playful, because we already are. Or how we can become more playful, because our playfulness is immeasurable. I’m talking, rather, about trusting our playfulness, believing in our playfulness, having faith in our playfulness, letting ourselves be guided by our playfulness—because our playfulness will lead us back to life itself. All of life. As much life as we can let in. To the embrace of all-embracing life. To, yes, joy.” (De Koven 2014b, p17)
But in my research so far I feel a bit like I am searching for a ‘how’ - how does one re-engage with the playful selves? How do you embrace a playful attitude? Perhaps this is the wrong question. A Playful Path is full of games, techniques, methods, exercises (both mental and physical) for choosing playfulness over anything else - but never suggests we the audience should be using them. De Koven’s determination is that we find ways of being playful that work for us all individually. The book is not THE Playful Path, it is A path, one of many possible ways of accessing our more playful selves, itself not about playing games, or the exterior methods and tools we use to play:
“You don’t have to play to be playful. You don’t need toys or games or costumes or joke books. But you do have to be open, vulnerable, you do have to let go… Playfulness is all about being vulnerable, responsive, yielding to the moment… You are loose. Responsive. Present.” (De Koven 2014b p.34)
Perhaps then it is not about how you embrace a playful attitude, but how you set yourself up to accept playfulness. Perhaps I am not trying to increase my own playfulness, but increase my capacity and willingness to be vulnerable, to make mistakes, to be responsive. De Koven suggests that the first stage towards playfulness is noticing the playfulness and fun around us, and we allow ourselves to experience it when it bubbles to the surface. Strangely, this creates another parallel between De Koven and Corita, whos primary focus in the first half of her assignments in Learning by Heart is on observation - paying attention to the tiny details between similar objects, looking at images close up, looking through viewfinders to find shapes and shadows you would normally have taken for granted. Her focus is on increasing her students’ ability to really see, through innovative and occasionally naïve methods. Where Corita focusses on playful observation, De Koven focusses on observing playfulness. But both authors have the same overall goal - to increase awareness, consciousness. Observation and presence, then, are key to embracing playfulness and, consequently, playful making.
I see a direct connection between the De Koven’s spirit of openness and vulnerability and an idea that I have talked about previously - that of laying the foundations of play, as reference in Norgard et al’s Signature Pedagogy. If, as De Koven suggests, we have “been taught to distrust play…that we are not and should not be playful…that play is childish, immature, destructive” (De Koven 2014b p.17) then in order to reclaim some ground, we need to remind ourselves that these ways of thinking are themselves untrustworthy and wrong. Perhaps by laying, or studying, the foundations of playfulness in creative practice, you already begin to engage with the idea that you are playful - you are just creating room for that playfulness. After all, by choosing to be part of the process, you are already demonstrating an openness to play.
Perhaps, then, a framework for playfulness in animation is not about creating a manifesto, a ruleset or setting values for animation practice - perhaps it is providing a toolset to allow others to create personal manifestos for playfulness. Or perhaps it is about leading by example.
One of the things I admire most about De Koven and Corita is that they practice what they preach. These are not theorists who observe play and attempt to restrain it in written papers. They are players, whose play is demonstrable in their creative practices as well as their writing. For Corita, it was her art, activism, printmaking, painting, sculpting. For De Koven is was his numerous projects, his writing, his workshops - De Koven’s practice was play. Perhaps the most important takeaway from this is that - that something which is incredibly important to me and my research is being inspired by playful people.
And perhaps that’s not totally independent from categories of play. Perhaps they are useful to understand what you’re aiming for. But there does feel, to me at least, in the one-step-forward, two-steps-back nature of this research project that there is a clear and distinct difference between thinking about categories of playfulness and frameworks for pleasure, and just being playful. Perhaps both have their uses.
“There is a great deal of science attached to the pursuit of fun. The study of fun, the psychology of fun, the anthropology of fun, the psycho-biology of fun, the theories of fun, the theories of games, the design of games, toys, playgrounds, parks, public spaces. I find myself most at home in the art and spirit sides of fun.”
Bernard De Koven, A Playful Path appendix iii.
References
ARRASVUORI, J., BOBERG, M. & KORHONEN, H. Understanding playfulness: An overview of the revised playful experience (PLEX) framework. 7th International Conference on Design and Emotion, 2010.
DE KOVEN, B. L. About Blue [Online]. deepfun.com. Available: https://www.deepfun.com/bernie-dekoven-fun-theorist/ [Accessed 31-05-2023 2023].
DE KOVEN, B. L. 2014. Interview with Bernie DeKoven. Playful Arts Festival 2014 - Playful Inspiration Day: Bernie DeKoven. USA.
DE KOVEN, B. L. 2014b. A Playful Path. ETC Press 2014.
GRAY, P. 21-02-2022 2014. A Playful Path, and DeKoven's Advice for Getting Back on It. Psychology Today [Online]. Available from: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/freedom-learn/201403/playful-path-and-dekovens-advice-getting-back-it 2023].
KENT, C. & STEWARD, J. 2008. Learning by heart, New York, Bantam Books.
KORHONEN, H., MONTOLA, M. & ARRASVUORI, J. Understanding Playful User Experience through Digital Games. DPPI, 2009 University de Technologie de Compiègne.
LOSTE, B. 2008. Corita: A biography. In: STEWARD, J. (ed.) Learning by Heart. New York, NY: Allworth Press.