Report on Free Play Exhibition
The Free Play exhibition takes place in the lobby of the Parsons building 2W 13th St., in the Anna – Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery. The exhibition gathers the work of artists that strikes social, cultural and philosophical issues throughout their games.
Curiously, I found that the artworks were organized according to the matter of the game. All the games that used technology were in one section of the gallery, on the other section were the ones that required more physical activity than the other games. Then, the table games like chess, cards and dice related were distributed in a parallel way along the gallery. Also, after reading several of the instructions of the games, I found that all of them were very easy to follow and easy to read and understand with one exception. The game created by Paul Noble “Doley” had a few instructions on the table and besides more specific instructs on the wall. I felt like I wouldn’t spend my time reading all of that when I can just go to other games and play them in the same time that I would take to read the instructions. Even if you could understand the game by only reading the instructions of the table, the fact that they put you some more instructions on the wall, makes it seem more time consuming than just sitting for a few minutes to play. For this reason, I would just leave the basic and clear instructions on the table and people will get more attracted to play Doley.
On the other hand, I pay attention to the circles that were on the floor. I tried to understand if it was only some design made for the exhibition or part of some game. Then I saw on the wall the game, “Feather Flun” by Pedro Reyes that was related to the circles. So instead of only putting some circles on the floor and the instructions of the game on the wall that indicates that the cicles are part of the game, I would add an arrow that will automatically connect the game with the circles at a simple glanze.
And to conclude, one more shift that I would make is in the ping pong game “Your parents, you, your wee sister and the Social Services by David Shrigley that was made for two players only but I would add three more to each group but using the same rules of the game. Because many people go to gallery not alone, it would be nice if there were a game where many people can participle. So the way that everyone get to participate is that the first player of the group “A”, plays with the first player of the group “B”, the second player of the group “A”, plays against the second player of the group “B” and so on. And every time each player of each group hits the ball they run until the end of the line to let the following player of their group take the raquet. In this way, five makes the roll that would have been done only one player.
