Body as Play

Abstract

This paper investigates the notion of embodiment in relation to technology, interactivity and performance. It aims at determining when the observer of an interactive system becomes a player and to what extent they are also performing. Our paper therefore questions notions of play and performance, and relates them to phenomena like embarrassment, social norms and social acceptability. We examine these premises in order to find out what triggers people to play in a public setting, and to overcome that invisible but persistent social threshold to perform in public by getting involved in an interaction. This is where the distinctions between performance and play become blurred. The audience around the player is taken as the discriminant supposedly inhibiting factor to determine whether people would step into the interaction and play: are they the passively observing public of a performance or the actively supporting participants eager to play themselves? In order to analyse play in relation to the above mentioned concepts, this paper reports the results of observing people play with an artwork for bodily interaction that was exhibited at a dance festival in Amsterdam. The artwork, called RollingStairs, consists of two unsteady balancing objects in the form of wooden stairs that are both connected to a different speaker box. By standing and moving on the stairs, the connected sound clips change. Interaction consists in balancing, and this requires collaboration between two participants (one on each stair). The goal is that both participants trigger the same sound while balancing on the stairs, by enacting different forms of collaboration between them. By looking at the way people interact with the artwork, we discuss what body as play means and, in particular, what triggers them to play using their body in public in a semi-public space.