In a world of juggling emails, texts and social media, the rise of stress and anxiety seems to be by-products of our non-stop, connected world. How to combat the effects?
Enter the world of games and play.
Ian Bogost, Georgia Institute of Technology professor and author of Play Anything: The Pleasure of Limits, the Uses of Boredom, and the Secret of Games, tells The Current‘s Anna Maria Tremonti how boredom plays a role in fun.
“In boredom there’s a sense that you’ve expended the obvious capacities of your situation.”
Bogost says that boredom gives you two choices. One is to seek something else out. And the other is to pay attention to boredom as new terrain and go deeper.
He sees boredom as necessary to pursue fun and says the experience of play is richest when you approach it with questions like, “What else is possible and how can I kind of collaborate with this object?”
This edition of The Current caught my attention. The Labyrinths I have been making in recent years have more to do with Fun and Play than Reflection or Meditation.
There is much overlap with Ian Bogost’s point of view about Fun and Games, and my decision to create chalk or painted Labyrinths in Public Spaces where Children are usually found, like playgrounds.
This interview helped explain a number of behaviours I have observed in people walking my Labyrinths, providing vocabulary which until now had remained elusive.
Cool. I’ll now have to go read his book.
Look closely upon the Traffic Island in front of Christie Subway Station, and you can make out the Green Labyrinth I painted on it
Every day, thousands of people see it, hundreds and hundreds walk over it, and perhaps dozens and dozens of people walk my weirdly located Labyrinth . . .
A mooseotaur?
These canadian labyrinths suck pic.twitter.com/PNXrf0l6AA
— 🐩 Royal Poodle 🐩 (@royal_poodle) August 7, 2017
It would behoof him to find the exit. First one out wins some timmies and poutine!
— Powerpuff the Lavender poodle🐩 (@DeerWithStripes) August 7, 2017
. . . Also eagerly awaits Labyrinth Walkers !
this wading pool eagerly awaits splashers! #Toronto St Clair/Bathurst #August pic.twitter.com/UA56jcD0M2
— Shawna Dorfman (@shawnascondos) August 5, 2017
Certainly does!
Didn't realize how high Lake had flooded & for it to do that.
I'll re-paint Humber Labyrinth🍥 in due course.
Earlier pics pic.twitter.com/3GTpPbulxg
— HïMY SYeD 🍥 City of Labyrinths Project (@LabyrinthsDOTca) July 25, 2017
