Shirt Slash
September 19th, 2012 By FL-11630
Our third challenge was for us to find a way to use digital media to propagate play as an expressive form. This had to be built atop a common skill or play property, and produce something in the process.
One very common skill, which quickly takes on play qualities when performed within the safe boundaries of friends, is the ability to balance attack and defense. To strike while minimizing our own vulnerability is at the root of our survival reflexes, a skill so ordinary that it can be observed in untrained animals. This behavior occurs when neither fight nor flight wins out in full, and a person or animal is then pressed to engage in both at once.
For humans, tools are employed to increase the effectiveness of attack or to reduce the need to defend. Such tools include, even among ancient and primitive humankind: stones, knives, spears, and swords.
Truly inflicting bodily injury is certainly not a playful activity. Instead, I’m focusing on sparring, by substituting fabric markers in the place of weapons, and competing to mark up one another’s t-shirts.
The game’s intersection with digital is in how the scoring occurs. A simple Processing application takes a before and after photo of each player facing the camera, then compares the end shots to the beginning versions to highlight changes made by marker contact. The number and thickness of lines drawn to each shirt can then be totaled for each player as the opposite partner’s score. The program is then able to declare a winner based on which player’s score is greater.
In the process, a one-of-a-kind artifact is created: a t-shirt design dynamically generated by the successful strikes of our playful sparring partners. The length, number, and intensity of strokes on each player’s shirt speaks to the battles they have been through.
Detailed instructions are available on the Guide: Text Page.
For more photos and details check out the Guide: Images Page.