The call it Sportpong

They explain:

“Sportpong is an interactive physical computer game. The field is projected on the floor, two or more players can fight in teams against each other. With a paddle on each foot you hit the ball to the goal or to defend your goal. Not only smartnes and reactivity let you win, also geometric appreciation and teamplay is required.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

You can rent one (you need a darkened room and a 4×7 meter playspace just for the game) for an undisclosed amount of money. You can get it customized. “Sportpong, they explain, “is an indipendent game with particular rules, a visual language and sound. With a very few intervention the layout of the game can be modified: colors, pictures, sounds can be customised and even special effects can be created.”

Easy to understand. Inviting. And you have to admit that it most definitely looks like fun.

via Yehuda

I was inexorably led to this post about an artist named Nomura, who was in the process of rehearsing for a performance in a Japanese public bath.

I quote, liberally:

“After warming up their voices, it was time to get changed and go into the bathing area. Here the participants practised making sounds through drumming and stroking the water. Divided into three groups, they made alternating sounds through their hands, the bath water and the tubs. The groups also talked among themselves and all kinds of sounds and timbre were created, which also resonated very well thanks to the high ceiling. The boys and girls were also separated into separate baths. They would listen to and compare each other’s sounds, before then trying to imitate them and experiment with different sounds.”

When asked the obvious “why a public bath?” Nomoru explained:

 ”I love baths and sento public baths. I like the resonance of sound in the space of the sento. Although sento are getting less and less, because I heard that in Senju there were lots I thought that I wanted to do this. I’ve previously done a music event in a bath once in the past, in Fukuoka. The sound of “playing” the bath water, in other words, the splish-splash sound of the water, is really rich, and the sento is an environment where you can hear that sound very well.”

And I opine:

This is playfulness, personified – a musician who appreciates the sound of water in a public bath enough to build a concert around it. And, even more, a musician who brings to his concert spontaneity and children, and fun.

In his words:

“If they have some fun, that will be the best thing. For me this is a job but for the performers, I want them to be involved and to enjoy themselves. If it was just about showing my own work I would call the event “Makoto Nomura Solo Concert” or “Makoto Nomura’s Bath Concert”, right? I want to make an event where both the performers and the audience participate.”

Unfortunately, we are not able to provide a video of the performance, as it is still in rehearsal. However, we can share a video or several demonstrating other manifestations of Nomura’s playful art.

A little clothespin music:

Click here to view the embedded video.

A little hose music:

Click here to view the embedded video.

And, for a finale, the entertaining and instructional book music:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Human spirals. We used to make them during New Games Festivals. They went something like this:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sometimes, after everyone was huddled in the spiral, we asked the people in the middle to work their way out, without letting go of each other’s hands, weaving their way under people’s joined hands, until everyone was in something like a line or maybe even a circle.

They were fun.

Then came this guy Dan Deacon, musician, inventor of the Dancing Human Tunnel

Click here to view the embedded video.

and now this is what people think of when you say “human spiral”

Click here to view the embedded video.

And so it goes.

Mike Lanza, who writes a visionary blog called “Playborhood,” has recently published an inspiring, and yet pragmatic book showing how you, too, can “turn your neighborhood into a place for play.”

I’ve been following Mike’s gently revolutionary activities for a while now, and, whenever I find myself too moved by articles to keep them to myself, I’ve been sharing them with you. See:

• Playborhoods are for Grown-ups Too
• Should Kids Work Like Adults
• When Kids Play Well
• Playing Ball with No Adult Around

Really read them, because they are each a glimpse into his huge heart and his deep devotion to establishing meaningful alternative for kids to play in, and for adults, too.

Or, better yet, buy his book.

For the last five years, Mike has been building and living a solution to the problems caused by children not having access to places where they can play freely. It’s a very real problem. People have been writing about it for years now, about how kids have grown obese because of lack of opportunities to play physically, how kids have become so scheduled and supervised that they barely understand how to socialize with other kids, how kids spend too much of their lives in screen time and way too little of their lives in face time.

Mike’s alternative: turn your yard into a place for the neighborhood kids to play in. Your front yard. Your back yard. Invite your neighbors’ kids. Invite your neighbors. Then help them make their own playgrounds.

In his book, he shows how this “do it ourselves” approach to providing for neighborhood play has led to something close to a quiet (well, not that quiet) revolution, in his neighborhood, in the Bronx, in Portland, Oregon and Iowa City, Iowa. And the more you read, the more you begin to believe, really believe, that you could do this very same thing, right in your neighborhood. And the more you think about it, the more you feel that doing something like this is, by every measure you can think of, a good thing to do. And then you’ll probably find yourself reading the book again, so you can figure out exactly how. And it’s all there. Waiting.

Hanna Wirman is interested in “Computer games, Game cultures, Women players, Gender, Identity, User-generated content, Participatory cultures, Fan cultures, Game artistry, Mobile games, Pervasive games, Non-human animal play.” Her blog, Ludus Animalis, is about: “animals, play, technology and design.” And it’s a treasure of deep thinking and caring and innovative efforts to focus our burgeoning ingenuity on learning from and playing with animals. Or maybe just leaving them alone with some good toys.

For example, in her brief article, she asks: “Wouldn’t this could be a great source for interface designers, too? We could ask how to design for 8-arm use? What is the impact of the underwater settings? Are there more arms involved if the cube is made bigger/smaller? How to solve a colour-based game when you are colour blind?”

Such delightful wonderings. Go to her blog. Share her vision. Share her.

It’s called Titanic. It’s a puzzle. Made by a very reputable puzzle-making company, which, in the USA, is called Smart Tangoes, USA.

Don’t think about it. Play it online. For free. Download the app. Also for free. Currently.

A beautifully made app, actually. With moving water and desperate people to save and so very much to puzzle over. It’s fun. It’s in the Major Fun queue. Put it in yours, too.

Joanne Silbernur of NPR told this story about storytelling.

Storytelling is one of the most ancient forms of communication — it’s how we learn about the world. It turns out that for people with dementia, storytelling can be therapeutic. It gives people who don’t communicate well a chance to communicate. And you don’t need any training to run a session.

White walks around the circle holding up a stock photo of a fit elderly man. He’s wearing a banana-yellow wet-suit vest and is water-skiing.

The man is smiling broadly at the camera, perfectly framed by a big arc of water.

“He’s experienced and he’s cool; he’s happy,” says White. “Look at the grin on his face.”

Linda White leads a session based on a program called TimeSlips at a Seattle senior center. The idea is to show photos to people with memory loss to help them make up a story.

Many of the people in this group don’t talk much on their own. But they’re enthusiastic about making up a life story for the water-skier — he’s a retired guy who’s been divorced several times. He’s got four children and a wife onshore, waiting to be taken out to dinner.

This story made me happy. It made me think about the fun of it, of making up a story that you knew you were making up, just for the fun of it. Of co-creating the story with other people. And not having to know anything “real” about the pictures or the people you were talking about. Not having to remember, when having to remember has become so hard, so frustrating, so painful, so separating. Just you and these people whose names you may or may not know, moment by moment, from your heart, weaving a story together. A story that doesn’t mean anything to anyone except in the moment of making. A story that you can create with the full power of your not knowing and not having to know. And then forget everything, except the fun.

My interest in street games, both traditional and new, continues unabated. I suppose because of their informality, because they invite play – open to everyone –  and because they are so elegantly designed (easy to understand, clear rules, clear boundaries, easy to adapt).

Recently, a friend of mine shared the following.

“The Dutch championship of a classic street game called ‘Stoepranden’ (roughly translated as ‘sidewalktouch’),” writes  Ianus Keller (I met Ianus when he and my son were both students at Delft University of Technology. I was significantly impressed by his genius. We have stayed in touch since) ”where two people stand opposite of a street and throw a ball to the side of the sidewalk of your opponent. If it bounces you can walk forward and catch the ball until you reach the other side.

“The kicker: the game has faded away because of the advent of more cars, so the organizers thought that older people would be in advantage. The winner was a surprise: 13-year old Iselene Visser.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

In response to yesterday’s post describing the sport of Fistball, one of our recent Dutch correspondents, Sylvan Steenhius, wanted us to know about a game called “hoog houden,” which, he explains is “literally translated to ‘keeping high up’.”

Sylvan continues:

Quite popular in the streets of the Netherlands, it involves players kicking a ball up into the air and passing it around without the ball touching the ground. Like hacky-sack. It was laziness that probably spawned the game ‘limb-ball’. We liked it because it emphasized the core of hoog houden, which is creatively passing and receiving the ball. Using the hands made for far more possibilities in our physical spontaneity. The games were highlighted by extravagent movement, preferrably resulting in some laying flat-out on the ground.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Then there’s Chinlone.

Click here to view the embedded video.

On behalf of the International Fistball Association, we are pleased to introduce you to the sport of Fistball.

According to the International World Games Association:

 ”…there is ‘striking’ similarity between volleyball and fistball: the object of both games is to place the ball in the opponents’ half of the field in such a way that it cannot get returned. The crucial difference in fistball: the ball is struck with either fist or arm – never with open hands – and it is allowed to bounce after each contact. The game was first mentioned in 240 A.D. by the Roman emperor Gordianus. In 1786 it was Johann Wolfgang Goethe who wrote about fistball being played between ‘four noblemen from Verona and four Venetians.’ Today’s game has five players per side jettisoning the ball over the ribbon – at speeds much beyond the 100 km/h – and making spectacular dives to avoid that it bounces more than three times in their half.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

And further:

“The men’s outdoor game, which is featured in The World Games, is played on a field of 20 by 50 meters. The center line divides the field in two halves; 2 meters above the center line a 6 cm wide net or tape is strung across the field. Service lines are marked at three meters from the center line in each of the halves. The ball is made of leather, has a circumference of maximum 68 centimeters, weighs up to 380 grams, and it is inflated at 0,75 bar. The matches are generally played to a system of ‘best of three sets,’ with a set won by the team accumulating 20 points.”

Which implies that there is, in all likelihood, a women’s outdoor, and probably a men and women’s indoor version of fistball.

But, say I, despite the deeply entrenched officialdom, the spectacularly athletic feats of spectacular athleticism to which fistball players are heir, the game’s the thing. And it looks like fun, especially if you don’t keep score, and find some long field to play in, like maybe an alley, and play with men and women and kids and people in wheelchairs, and with, maybe, a beach ball, and just see how long you can keep a ball going back and forth, hitting it only with fist and arms, eh?