For my final project, I want to work on a digital game. The idea for my game is that there has been a shipwreck and the main character has become lost on an island. The island isn’t very big and there isn’t much to explore. However, every day there are activities that the character can do in order to build a new ship and leave the island. He just needs to muster the strength to do them. The first few days, he won’t be able to do much. But as days go by, larger activities will appear for him to do. Once the activity is finished, then the day will go from day to night once the activity is finished. From time to time, evil creatures will attack him, but not kill him.

I don’t need much space for the design of the game since it is digital. I will only need a computer, headphones, and a chair for music. The isolated sound will help create an environment for the player to experience the game much better. If it is possible, having four curtains so the player doesn’t get distracted would be great. However, it is not absolutely needed for the experience.

The first time I have attended the Tangle performance from the Polyglot Theatre, I didn’t really know what to expect. In my head, I imagined that it will be an interactive theatre experience, where the audience, both adults and children, will participate in a play activity of some sort of a competitive nature. I did not quite realize that it is mainly designed for kids until I came to the Campus Center Plaza and found myself surrounded by children and their parents. Instantly, I found myself feeling like I do not belong, however, the nature of the performance still remained curious to me.

“Tangle” started off with a short intro in which Polyglot actors presented a sound and movement performance. The peculiar music set a playful mood for what was about to happen next. Each participant was given a simple task in order to contribute to the art piece. The Polyglot actors gave each visitor a ball of elastic string that we were asked to tie at one of the poles positioned across the performance space. Then everyone had to tangle the elastic all around and had the freedom to be as creative as they want to be. In the end, space was filled up by an intricate web of colorful strings, vibrantly contrasting against the grey tones of our campus.

As part of the assignment, we were asked to attend the performance both as observers and the participants. My first visit was definitely more observative because I felt slightly uncomfortable being around children and parents. The reason for this was not the preconception that “I am too old or too cool for this”, but rather an impression of being out of place. Since the Tangle performance is designed for children, it makes the event an opportunity for adults to play with their little ones. A college student was definitely an excluded age group. I felt like the space provided a cheerful experience for those involved but it was even more special for participating families. The interactivity of Tangle created a beautiful opportunity for adults to share the joy of playing around and with children and maybe to feel like they are children as well. I could see that they were sharing an intimate moment of bonding, which made me feel like I should step out and observe the preciousness of it. As a system of play, Tangle generates a space for exploration, experimentation and for simply having fun. I believe that this performance successfully achieves all of those goals and even more, as its outcome is a true artifact of social interactions between parents and children that at the same time blurs boundaries between childhood and adulthood.

Later, being a participant of Tangle has opened new perspectives on the exhibition. I have realized that the play aspect of it is perceived differently by children and those older than them. When you are young, there is no limit to your imagination. That is why children participating in the performance were playing within the created space and could imagine it as something bigger. The colorful labyrinth of elastic could be a spider web, a trap, a new universe or anything a child could think of. However, speaking from an “adult” perspective, I remained very aware of my surroundings throughout the event. I felt like my creativity was limited by the realization of having strangers around and being in an artificially created space. This performance was disruptive, in a sense, because of its choice of a routine location and it also holds a crossover of concepts explored in the class such as space, expression and social interaction.

Speaking of the performance as an opportunity for artistic expression, Tangle is a piece of art that is born through people’s participation and interaction and therefore is an exhibit of human contact and creativity. The tangled elastic is in itself a metaphor for social interaction, as each intersection and a knot traces the participation of an individual. The group effort produces a massive art installation, while its creators of which remain anonymous. With just a right touch of colorful chaos, Tangle finds a balance between individual expression and group participation in a way that each one can contribute to this piece of art but no one gets to own it. Also, the audience gets an opportunity to explore the elasticity of both their minds and bodies! 🙂

“It’s the middle of the week and the Central Plaza has been taken over by the Arts Center”. As the week progressed, all us got to see the few poles in front of the palm trees develop into a colorful mess. If we went by at the right time, we could even see kids playing in and around the installation and adding their own contributions to it. Tanged, by the Polyglot Theatre Company is an interactive experience, primarily for children, where each participant is given a ball of elastic and asked to “go on a journey”. Once they have exhausted their ball of elastic, or “tangle”, they are encouraged to play in the space that had been created.

The exhibit, as such, is a peculiar piece of art. Each participant enters the exhibit with a rough(ish) idea of what to expect – the tangle around the poles definitely spark the curious side of one’s mind. Upon entering, each person is asked to tie the tangle around and that’s about the only instruction we’re ever given. What happens next is series of interesting interactions between participants, performers and poles. I’ll be extrapolating from my experience in Tangled from here on. Participants begin tying the tangle around poles and making zig-zag patterns across the space. It often happens that two participants get in each other’s way. This typically leads to one of two possibilities – either they nod and move their way, or they get a little quirky and tie some tangle around/across each other and then move on. In my observation, the latter happened much more often that the former as time passed, and kids who participated would laugh and tie the tangle around each other. When a participant interacts with a performer, it almost always led to an interesting event. Usually, the performer would try and either circle around the participant with some tangle, or sometimes the participant would join in with an idea of how to tangle up the performer. Once a participant has interacted in such a manner with a performer, this nature of interaction begins to spread, as one participant ties another and them another and so on.

It became clear to me that performers have a very delicate role in the experience – they nudge the participant when necessary, while maintaining enough distance to allow them to express themselves. For example, if performers merely went around the space tying people up with tangle, the entire experience would be different, since it’s likely that most participants would follow suit and just tie each other up. However, the performers don’t just do what they think is right, they also adapt to the participants train of thought. If a participant decides to run from a performer, they run after them. If, on the other hand, a participant decided to chase a performer, they would run away. This dynamic creates for a social experience, where each participant is not only nudged to interact with performers, but also with other participants.

Another interesting interaction that occured during my observation was between participants and the exhibit itself. Each participant had their own unique way of interacting with the exhibit. Some would go crazy, running all over the place and tying their ball of elastic to every possible pole/fence/human that they could possibly find. Some (mostly little kids) would find joy in going around a single pole in circles until they could see that their tangle was all over the pole. Some wouldn’t rest until they had tied every other person at least once with their tangle. The result of this freedom that participants are given leads to them being able to express themselves as they want. This expression leads to art – the journey of each individual is different and the exhibit in essence can be considered a “criss-cross” between different people’s journeys. Each group of participants produce something that’s different from the other, yet in a larger sense – it can be considered as similar, in the sense that it’s all just a collection of people’s expression through their journey with a ball of elastic.

Most participants had a chance to tie around at least 2 balls of tangle when I was participating (I think because there weren’t as many participants in my session). Kids would finish their balls of elastic and run to grab another. Once they were done, and they weren’t given more tangle – they began to play. Performers would facilitate this play, but most participants would begin on their own. Watching kids play was one of the most entertaining aspects of participation for me. They would come up with ideas of how to engage with the play space like I never would. The play aspect is generated, again, by the freedom and the contextualization of the space by the participant. While some may choose to simply jump across the exhibit and bounce around, some would sneak from below and pop their heads out ever so often to frighten someone else. It generates social expression where each participant interacts with some entity in the space to engage in play. It’s a wonderful exercise in creative exploration.

To conclude, the Tangled experience is one that provides an almost unrestricted space to express their creative side. It is achieved through the interaction between performers and participants with the exhibit and each other, and is unique to every participant. The experience not only allows, but also encourages participants to be as expressive as they can, and they do so subtly.

Polyglot Theatre’s Tangle decontextualizes NYUAD’s campus plaza, turning it into a playground of colorful elastic streamed through the air. The instructions for play are simple: take your ball of elastic and do something with it within the fence that surrounds the space. What emerges from these simple constraints and the design of play are various individualized experiences rooted in a shared outcome of empowerment. Through its ability to engage various audiences and its potential for expression, Tangle invites its audiences to create their own meaning and play experience.

When observing Tangle, I was struck by the range of participant ages, the audience an amalgamation of parents, grandparents, college students, and kids. Every participant had the same instruction yet the resulting visible experiences differed. For instance, most of the kids immediately started to take the elastic and build their own cities, swings, and other architectural feats. The few college students present, myself included, were a bit hesitant to partake in the experience, perhaps due to a self-awareness and societal influence that developed over time. However, the performers addressed this by initiating play with those who weren’t quite sure what to do or were feeling shy. For instance, they would start “tagging” people or tieing them up, forcing the participant to respond in some way. Thus, the performer is critical to making the play inclusive and encouraging the participant to make the active decision to engage with the space. Once the participant has decided to engage with the space, they are inevitably transformed in some way and their confidence in playing increases. Thus, they are empowered to create their own experience and interact with others and the space in a greater capacity.

Additionally, there were some differences amongst the participants who were there as a caretaker. Some of the caretakers were in the ribbons chasing the child or playing with them. Some of the parents/guardians/grandparents would stand on the side and observe the child from afar, making comments such as “Wow! That’s amazing.” or “What are you building?” However, due to the labyrinth of ribbon, the caretaker would inevitably have to enter the mass of ribbons to keep track of the child. Thus, the design of the space encouraged observers to enter the space deeper and actually move through the ribbon. Additionally, having such a relatively small space meant that each participant would surely cross the path of another. As I ran into other participants within the space, we exchanged a smile or look of shared understanding, creating a sense of group empathy. Other participants would start playing together, evident by the expanding game of tag. In this regard, Tangle can be thought of as a social experience, that even if you are not actually speaking to another participant and even if the participants have wildly different ages, there is a warm feeling ensuing from the group empathy that the performance facilitates.

Having Tangle in the campus plaza meant that almost anyone on campus would walk past the space. The colorful elastic ribbon and the musical performances invited observers to question “what’s that” and see the campus plaza in a new context. Even at night, when no performances went on, the lighting of the space created intrigue about the experience. Thus, Tangle transcends traditional boundaries of performer, participant, and observer–no matter which role they had, the individual is transformed in some way. The performers and the design of the space encourage the participant to engage with others and the space and create their own meaning, whether it be a bonding experience with their child, a chance to get out of the everyday routine, or play an epic game of tag. Through being abstract enough that the participant must create their own experience, the space empowers the participant to find their own meaning and inevitably transforms its audience.

Tangle also creates meaningful play through its expressive nature. There are basic constraints based on the participant: do whatever you want with this specific ball of elastic within this space. Within these constraints, the participant has great freedom of movement. They can pick the color of the elastic, where they start, where they go, what they do within the space, etc. This freedom of movement facilitates artistic expression. The participant is able to leave a visible impact on the space and the idea of construction, common to many Polyglot productions, allows the participant to imagine anything they want. With elastic and the ability to build anything, the participant can build a tower, wrap another participant like a mummy, create a beautiful path, etc. In this way, Tangle is a powerful reminder that there is no single way to get from point A to B and it allows the participant to create anything they desire within the space. Tangle’s potential for expression empowers the participant to create something and elicit meaning from the structure they create and the experience of creating.

One design choice I am still considering is enclosing the space with a fence though it may not have actually been a choice the artists made. The fence seemed to contradict the ideology of making play inclusive for everyone, encouraging play in everyday life, and decontextualizing a public space. It seemed contradicting to have Tangle in the campus plaza, the most open and public part of campus, but surround it by a fence so the everyday passerby could not interact with it. Additionally, it created a distinction between a play-world and the “real” world which symbolically does not encourage the participant to utilize this transformation in the “real” world. On the other hand, having a fence symbolically has a boundary distinguishing the play space, lending itself to creating a world that defies the “real” world expectations. Despite the fence, Tangle still achieves an outcome of transforming and empowering the participant.

Through creating a meaningful experience for multiple audiences and providing a space for artistic expression, Tangle is able to generate a feeling of empowerment.

Tangled by the Polyglot Theatre is a very free and liberal form of play. The concept of Tangled is made real through the use of elastic thread-like strands wound around the designated area of play. This designated area of play is usually a public space within which something like Tangled would ideally not be cited. As the play activity is on-going, there usually is some background music that plays in order to provide a very relaxed and playful atmosphere. This music is the combination of random sounds from different instruments and digital systems. Tangled is primarily designed for children, and their parents to play together and have a good bonding time.

As mentioned earlier, Tangled is for kids and their parents or guardians. It is noteworthy that despite both contrasting age groups in the play space at the same time, their experiences are often miles apart. Tangled is designed in such a way that children naturally enjoy it more. The attractive colours of the thread, the music and even the presence of more kids doing the same activity makes it enjoyable for the children. Tangled plays heavily on their imagination and challenges them to create whatever they want to create. It gives them absolute freedom to do as much as they can in terms of forming patterns intentionally or unintentionally. Parents or older people in general perhaps find joy in seeing their kids play and have a good time but most likely do not share the same level of excitement as the kids. This is a somewhat natural reaction in the sense that the set-up of Tangled may be too abstract in their minds and the objective may be distant. A successful session of Tangled requires the full wild imagination of the player and this is something adults usually lack in thereby robbing them of the true Tangled experience. Having taken part in Tangled at the same time as other kids much younger than I am. I noticed that from the onset, the kids would run off in pairs or in groups and try to be as creative as they possibly can. I, on the contrary, felt a bit out of place because I felt as though I was playing a children’s game.

Tangled can be considered a social game in the sense that it requires the collective collaboration of many players (the kids and their parents) to achieve a successful session. A single person entering the play space and winding the elastic thread around would certainly defeat the purpose of the activity and perhaps, the person might feel extremely bored. Tangled is designed to be played with many people at the same time. This particularly is due to the fact that, the more people there are winding up the thread around the space, the livelier the play space gets and the wilder the imagination of the participants run. The joyful screams of a fellow tangler, the patterns they are making, their movement through the space or even their level of involvement in the activity all influence a player’s experience, making it a very social game.

After a session of Tangled, the woven elastic forms a random but intricate pattern. Coupled with its colourful nature, this could be deemed as an artwork. The aim of the play experience, however, is not to create an artwork but rather to provide an opportunity for kids to have fun. Also, the randomness of the aftermath of a play session makes it difficult for one to draw artistic meaning out of it. Indeed, the pattern that remains after each play session if different from the previous one and thus meaning is almost impossible to draw. It is definitely aesthetically pleasing to observe but, in my opinion, Tangled cannot be deemed as art.

At the start of the session, the players are handed a balled up piece of the colourful thread and are told to go and tangle. That is the only instruction given – to tangle. This leaves the participants with all the freedom they desire to play as they so wish. They can make any patterns they want, they can wind the thread on anything they want, and they can play for as long as they want. This level of freedom is indeed what makes Tangled what it is. Also, the disruption of a rather unusual public space sends the idea to the children that they can achieve any play experience anywhere and that play ought not to be limited to certain areas only.

Overall, Tangled successfully achieves its aim of providing a very fluid and free space for children and their parents (or guardians) to play without the hindrance of any rules or prohibitions. Despite the subjective outcomes of the play experience, Tangled indeed offers a somewhat good time to all its participants.

For two weeks this semester, the Palm Trees had been transformed into a space that served as a playground for kids during the day and a colorful art piece the rest of the time. It started with a few golden poles erected in the middle of the campus. The white fencing around these poles clearly marked out the play space. Over the next few days, this space was converted from an empty area into an extremely confusing and colorful art piece. This ‘art piece’ was supposed to be created completely by children running around with a ball of colorful elastic in their hands during the various designated times.

Tangled was an interactive experience wherein the participants themselves shaped the experience of the participants as well as the onlookers. Also, interestingly, every performance was not an isolated one. Each performance started from where the previous performance had left, in a sense. All the elastic tied around by the previous group was pushed up the poles and therefore the new group of participants was not engaging with the previous performers’ residue from the get go. However once they had established a pretty good base for themselves and gotten comfortable with the play space, they started using the pre-present elastic in different ways. The Polyglot participants present in the space also played a huge role in making the participating kids aware of this. This was beautifully portrayed in the last performance of the group. During the performance, the Polyglot participants pulled down all the elastic in the space and the kids interacted with this in many different ways. While the youngest ones just sat on top of it and were amused by this new, colorful floor, the relatively older ones started using it as a ladder and tried climbing up (which has been captured in the videos for which the links are posted at the end). Therefore, the play experience did not depend on just one performance. It kept building up on everything the the previous performances had left in the space as their residue. Every single performance built up on this residue.

I felt that the Polyglot participants present in the space played a very important role in making the play experience more social for the kids. I noticed this when I was a participant as well as when I was an observer. Most of the kids came into the play space and were so fascinated by the colorful ball in their hands that they did not care about who else was in the space let alone interact with others. Most kids would mark some space for themselves and be content with playing within that space. However, I saw how the Polyglot participants kept going to different areas in the play space and kept encouraging the kids to interact with each other by creating scenarios using the elastic and the kids. For a second the kids would stare at them wondering why these adults are acting like kids but would soon forget about that and join them in this new game. Therefore, as the performance progressed, the space became much more social literally with the kids being made to interact with each other and also metaphorically with everyone entering the space with individual elastic balls and creating an artwork that is built on the entangling of their paths in the play space.

Overall, it felt that the experience might have been extremely different for the participants if they were the only ones present in the space and they did not have the Polyglot participants helping them figure out new ways to interact with the space. In fact, this holds true for everyone and not just the kids. Even when our class went into the Tangled space as a group, we started by just walking around and trying to navigate through the web of elastic. It was only when they started wrapping us in elastic did we realize that this was one of the ways to interact with the space as well as with each other. I doubt that all the extra interaction with the elastic would have happened in any performance if the Polyglot participants were not present in the space. It is very interesting to note how this is completely different from some of their other performance pieces. For example, in Ants they do not interact with the kids at all but still end up creating an artwork with the kids whereas in Tangled, a huge part of the participants’ experience relied on their interaction with the Polyglot participants.

When the Polyglot Theatre Group came to our class, they had described how they take one simple element and try to create a meaningful experience for kids and their parents around it. I believe that they were able to achieve this through Tangled simply because they enabled the participating kids to engage their imagination and create something that was more than just wrapping colorful elastic around poles. When a kids walks out of the performance space, they do not remember wrapping around the elastic but rather what happened after it- creating an ocean inside the space, climbing the elastic ladder or just sitting on a fascinatingly colorful floor. The kids were free to explore the space and do whatever they want in it. The parents were excited to see the response of their children to this space. It felt like a bonding experience between the parents and their children. For some the bond was strengthened by the parents actively participating with their child to make them more comfortable in the space and for others it was about enjoying their children exploring something new and expressing themselves. Being a theatre company that focuses on creating meaningful experiences for children, it was very interesting to see that space, even after the children had left, still gave the effect of a child’s first drawing on paper- scribbles with colorful crayons. It was truly an experience made for and by the kids.

Links to videos:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Mm8EfuDAjX19J_a0455It_ldwZq_uZ_J/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1nUCHGuNrcMTyTQP_j1sqlGbzV8HfEv08

Wristbands, all types of wristbands. I had a plastic box divided by different compartments in which I kept elastic or colored threads, thick or thin, glowing stones, and tiny figures. Tangle reminds me of the passion of observing my threads, trying new challenging patterns after getting inspiration in YouTue videos, unravel them when entangled, and wondering what to create with them and other materials. I cherished the satisfaction of wearing my wrists full of color or observing my mom’s smile every time I gave her one of my creations. In this essay, I will use my wristbands’ experience and the book “Design for Play: A guide to creating successful play spaces” by Aileen Shackell, Nicola Butler, Phil Doyle, and David Ball to discuss my observation of Tangle and my interaction with it.

As a theatre company that perceives children as participants and collaborators rather than as merely part of the audience, Polyglot came to New York University Abu Dhabi to create a massive weaving play space. While being bounded by white fences, the space engages children and their families with hundreds of colored elastic tied to a set of poles distributed in the main outdoor area of our campus. By closely observing one of the first exhibitions, I saw how participants were grouped right at the space portal and given a short introduction by four men and women dressed in colorful and loose pants, suspenders, and white shirts. They smiled and looked extremely excited about what was about to come. Inside the space, there was another guy with an ukelele and a keyboard, creating sounds that you wouldn’t normally hear in daily life. The guy played a song that I might have heard sometime in my childhood combined with low and high-pitched sounds. Each participant was given either a yellow or red ball of elastic and the single instruction to tangle it around the space. Subsequently, participants crossed the portal and walked around trying to intertwine their elastic around the poles and/or other elastic.

As my hand-made wristbands presented a possibility to test the limits of my capabilities, by having a ball of elastic in hand and a colorful and unknown world ahead, children were introduced to a unique and unusual challenge. Some parents were confused and probably uncertain about the potential dangers of the new space. Shackell et al. highlight the importance of risk-taking in play, describing how taking new risks and challenges is an essential part of growing up and providers need to understand and account for that in play experiences. It seemed for my observations and our class talk with the artists that Polyglot understood this well. Although they mentioned having a meticulous design process, and never experiencing an accident, they aspire for spaces in which children can explore worlds that as in the real one, have risks and challenges. In Tangle, Children first faced the challenge of securing one end of the elastic ball and deciding where to go until they finish the creation of their very own path. This resulted in varied difficulties for children, as some received more help from their parents, were older, or weren’t obstructed by other children. Their motion, creative, and social capabilities were in this way tested in the framework of Tangle, and they were able to observe their achievements by identifying their elastic’s trajectory in the network.

The nature of having one single instruction gave children another challenge: deciding what to do next. For me, this is one of the most valuable aspects of Tangle, as children can interact with a space in which they can experience freedom and the process of decision-making. Whatever they do is up to them. As such, according to Shackell et. all, a successful game experience is based not only in enabling the creation of challenges and test of skills but also in offering physical movement, stimulating the five senses, fostering social interaction, and allowing the manipulation of materials. Perhaps not having a definite “goal” made adults feel lost, but children were excited. Some tried to finish the first task as soon as they could to finally “play” -weren’t they playing before? Although fenced, Tangle provided a large space for children to move around freely. Not only move but move in any way they wanted. Along with the huge colorful and abstract structure, the sound, and the entrance portal, artists played an important role in transforming what is usually the entrance of the university in a whole new world with different rules than the ones of the “normal” world.

They could interact with the exhibition’s materials as well as with their parents, the artists, and other children, and this interaction was not the same as the one with the outside world and its people. By seeing the artists dance around, make funny faces and sounds, and using the elastics as jungles or ponds where they could fish and explore, children understood how the world of Tangle could be anything they want it to be. I saw one girl trying to climb the net of elastic with the help of her mom, a group of children crawling with one of the artists like snakes, a boy running from an artist that was trying to chase him, and even another older boy trying to get to the microphone. Maybe they could do all these things outside of Tangle, but in this world everything they did was different. Where else have they been allowed to tangle other children with their elastic, run as fast as they wanted, be their favorite animals, and scream as loud as they could? Everything while being below and in between a colorful world of elastic that was created by them, Polyglot, and other members of the community.

Like my wristbands, Tangle was described by the media as an “artwork”. If we consider “art” as something that is “created” and has a particular purpose, I think “Tangle” was indeed an art piece. The successful play experience described above was created by different choices. Why colored elastics? Why an open space? Why artists dressed up in a funny way? Why pulling the new elastic up every time a session finishes? What is the purpose of creating a giant network of elastic that becomes different with every participant? From the design process, it seems there have been efforts to guide participants to live a transformative experience. As the world of elastic changes continuously and is experienced differently by the participants, the outcomes of the experience changes with each session and person.

Overall, I think Tangle is a world that disrupts public space to turn it into a large playground. This playground allows for play to happen thanks to the world’s abstract form, the artists’ energy, and the imagination of the participants. In his book, “Play Matters”, Miguel Sicart argues that playgrounds are spaces of play that lend themselves to a type of play but do not impose a particular play activity, purpose, or reward. The best wristbands I have done were those in which I just played with threads and figures without thinking of a particular outcome. As such, Tangle’s world allows for a play of imagination and interaction with the space and other participants. However, it does not have a specific reward or purpose for the experience. I think that’s exactly what makes Tangle so great and fun, the fact that it can be whatever you want it to be, and you can be whoever you want to be in it.

A colorful playground that grows with the imagination of individuals. Tangle is a welcoming space that proves what could be accomplished with a bundle of a thread. There are multiple poles on a stage stranded with colorful threads around, swarmed by their creators. People are having a good time with the company of music. The participants are mostly children who are observed by their worried parents for in case something goes wrong. Each child is given a bundle of a thread which they go around playing while tangling it around however they wish. The tangling usually starts by creating a knot on a random spot such as a pole, or another already existing thread. Then with the bundle of thread at hand, the navigation starts around the space. The thread travels twisting around the space on the direction the participant wishes. As a result, another thread takes its place next to many others enlarging the space a little bit more. Once the work with the thread is done, the participant starts playing around the space, socially interacting with the other participants. There is a constant movement in the space, a constant creation.  Such a mobility evolves the space into a more customized one by time. There are performers leading the flow of this growth. They are interacting with the participants to aid them to express themselves. Space is the fruit of expression, in this sense, it exhibits artistic value.

There is a deeper meaning behind the play. Space is not the result of only one individual’s ambition and decisions. The consequentiality in this regard cannot be credited to one person. It is the result of a group play, each individual participated. This, however, is different than multiple people painting together an art piece because the possible actions are much more random and the boundaries are much few. When a group is painting together it is much simpler for one to grasp what the other is doing, there is much less randomness involved. There is one dimension missing and it is much simpler to tell when the piece is complete which part of it was painted by whom. Another difference with the painting would be the aspect of interaction. The work of a child is constantly affected by one another. The way the thread will be incremented into the already existing art piece will be affected by the scattering of the children, the density of the already existing threads, the relative position of the children who like each other and who dislike each other. The social aspect of this play will greatly influence the art itself. A child who is going around with his thread will see his friend and change his direction, approaching towards him. On the contrary, he could get in a small argument with another child and move away from her. What makes Tangle an art piece is the fact that the space is molded by perpetual social interactions. When observed as a whole, Tangle is the art of a group but each step of this art is anonymously made.

The anonymity of the children could be challenged by a simple question. Once done with tangling the thread and lost track of it, could any of the children exactly tell which thread belonged to them? The answer to this question reveals an assertion. The value given to their own contribution is dominated by their willingness to be a part of the group. This assertion is helpful in explaining the anonymity. The condition of anonymity is the result of the attitude the children have towards the space. They are not there to create art, they are there to play and have fun. This makes them more unaware of their navigation through the space so their lack of artistic intent creates a more artistic space. That is because space grows more in the direction of social interactions the children are having rather than an artistic purpose. The performers have a vital role in such a shaping of the space because of their reserved social role as guides. The performers have direct control over what part of the space will be populated. The scattering of the children is greatly influenced by the actions of the performers. They can drag the attention to themselves with an interesting proposition such as let us pretend this thread is a sea. They can minorly affect the perceptions of the children of the space via inventing mini-games inside the already existing game. They can say that the floor is lava and the navigation of the children will be completely different. Children will try climbing to the thread not to step to the lava. The actions of the performers in this regard have an influence on the finalized art piece that is the space with colorful threads lying around.

In terms of the experience, Tangle provides an opportunity for trading ideas and creations. For a child, Tangle space is different than a basic playground because it was partially built by him. On the contrary, it optionally offers the exact opposite too! As a play, Tangle achieves to create a feeling of freedom to contribute without being judged. There is a form of relief to know that no one could ever tell which part of the space was crafted by you if you do not want to share that information. A participant could agree to move a thread in a planned fashion in company with another participant or he could do it alone in peace. In this way, the imagination of the participants, mostly children as mentioned before, are not limited with their social phobias or introvert characters. There is a room for play for everyone.

Tangle is successful in bringing out the creative and expressive sides of its participants. I can confirm this as a participant myself. The positive aspect of this expression is that it is unconscious and totally the result of the participants’ social interaction. Each incrementation is unique, there are no two threads that take the same path. Overall, I believe Tangle manages to create a successful play environment paved with social interaction, guidance, and a little bit imagination.

Dogukan Avci

For a few weeks, Polyglot have been holding a social event called “Tangle” in front of the palm trees in our campus, NYUAD. The exhibition consists of a few long poles on which the participant has to walk around and tie up (or tangle) long strings several times, thus creating a large web like structure, or a “tangle” of elastic over time. The structure becomes more complex and compact over time, allowing the participants to interact with it in different ways, for example climbing on it, sitting on it, pulling it, etc. It is also quite eye0catching because many different colours are used to create the structure. One thing that I did notice is that people seem to tangle more elastics around the central area, and seem to play and interact more in that spot as opposed to the outer corners of the exhibition. This could be because it could be interpreted as a “social spot” which attracts more people to tangle strings and interact with each other, thus making the tangle of elastics there thicker or more durable for play in a way.

The social nature of the play in tangle is quite interesting.  When I participated in the event, I could see many children and their parents playing with one another, and also playing with different children. In the area where there was more of a crowd, I saw some children climbing on the poles and the strings, while concerned parents stood by them in fear that they would fall and hurt themselves, but in the less tangles areas, there were less children and more adolescents and adults just walking underneath the structure and observing the children play. The actors were also taking part in the game by moving around and influencing the children’s creative ideas. An actor  even tangled me with two other adults in the exhibition to influence a playful environment, to show that the structure was not just necessarily for children, but to target and even larger audience.

What the exhibition does in a sense is give the children freedom to express themselves and their ideas through the space that is provided to them. The actors don’t influence them to act in anyway, and they are able to come up with their own way of playing through the materials they are provided with. This is not to say that each child has their own idea, but once a child sees another one behaving or playing in a way that looks interesting to them, they are inclined to imitate them in order to experience that form of play. I personally would have loved to climb on the structure, but was afraid I might have hurt the children there due to my weight and size, which also worried me that maybe the structure wouldn’t be able to hold me up the way it could support a child.

This form of play is different to our conventional games because there is no exact aim or outcome of the game within the given space. The children are just given materials  and are free to create their own kind of entertainment within the space. For example, the games that we played in class with the actors had an aim; keep the paper ball up in the air, or do not get caught by the dragon. this allows the children to be innovative and creative in terms of the type of game they are coming up with, there are no rules or specific number of players that need to participate in order for the game to be playable, therefore I believe that Polyglot have achieved this free environment for children to play and be creative, as well as interact with the other children in the exhibition through this form of expression.

In 2008, I bought for the first time in my life a video game with my own pocket money; LittleBigPlanet, an extraordinary game that permanently changed the way I perceive video games. Attending and observing the Tangle exhibition brought me back to the sense of wonder I first felt when I played LittleBigPlanet. This essay is not about LittleBigPlanet, but I will partly use it as well as text from Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal to analyze Tangle and the way it affected me and other players.

The Tangle experience starts before entering it; a bit more than a dozen of three or so meters long plastic poles stand on top of short platforms in the middle of the campus center, enclosed by a white fence. On top of the poles, hundreds of pieces of colorful string are interwoven, forming some sort of a chaotic beautiful roof. After getting my ticket scanned, I stood outside of the fence while four members of the Polyglot group wearing white t-shirts, suspenders, or yellow pants surveyed us like they would for test experiment subjects. Another member stands back behind a keyboard where he plays bubbly dream-like music, using other instruments such as a flute, his own voice, and percussions. Once we’re in, we’re handed balls of orange ribbon and one instruction; tie it around the poles. This eccentric introduction managed to convey a clear message that proved to be accurate during the rest of the exhibit; this play experience wasn’t going to be your average play experience. It was going to be quirky, weird and fun. All you had to do is anything you wanted to.

Playing with the ribbon was pleasing. It was elastic and really nice to touch. The material made it so that it was really encouraging to pull at it, fold it around your fingers, and tie it a little everywhere. And tying it was satisfying. In Reality is Broken, Jane McGonigal explains how one of the reasons why play works is that it gives you work. When one plays in a well-designed environment, feedback is provided almost immediately to congratulate the player for the efforts they have accomplished and to give them that satisfying feeling one gets after tying their thread around 5 different poles, feeling the pull of the string in their hand, and getting visual feedback from the new colorful path they have created. And this feeling only grows stronger as one plays more and starts tracing the strings with their eyes as they elongate, overlap and cross each other. McGonigal argues in her book that one looks in games for this kind of work because it is rarely provided in real life. Whether it is in the workplace or in school, people often find their work confusing and or meaningless. Whenever I want to prepare for my Data Structures mid-term, I struggle because I don’t have any material to practice on and no one to guide me, and even if I re-read the lessons 5 times I still get a C on my test; there is no perceptible challenge. But in the world of Tangle, it is not only easy but also rewarding to create and shape the space around you, and that is more satisfaction than most of what we get everyday. And it’s also a lot more fun.

It’s entertaining to tie strings around poles and having to sneak oneself inside the tangle as it grows thicker to get from point A to point B, but Tangle is at its most fun when other people’s fun starts affecting yours. For example, I spent the first half of Tangle tying my string everywhere to create the most complicated structure, but my play experience changed completely once one of my friends joined in and started pulling down on the strings that were already on the poles before we started. We worked then to pull down the whole mass until it was on our level, using it – or failing to – as hammocks, going down under the mass and sprouting back up, trapping each other, etc. Each move from one would inspire someone’s else’s move and change the way they were playing. That was when I had a feeling that the possibilities were “endless”, similar to when I played LittleBigPlanet. While the first few hours of the game are spent on the adventure/platform story mode, the game changes completely and reaches new heights of fun once the main campaign is over and the online mode is unlocked. In LittleBigPlanet, players are able to create their own levels with the same if not more depth than the story mode levels and the community never fails to provide with quality, surprising, and fresh creations. While the poles, strings and our own bodies are our only tools of creation in Tangle, there is a similar concept of play-enhancing community. Like in LittleBigPlanet, there is a lot of room for creativity in Tangle. Players can pretty much do anything they want, and the Polyglot members encourage unconventional activities. They never stop you, but do restrain you physically with pieces of string. They also interact a lot with the children and follow them in their fantasies – that the strings are a spider web, a fishing net, or whatever may cross their mind. And again, like in LittleBigPlanet, the more people played and initiated or followed new forms of play, the more fun it was for everyone involved. When it comes to social play, there is little need to provide complicated gameplay tools like chess pieces or different FPS weapons. A few pieces of string suffice. There is also no need to provide a “story-mode” or complex guidelines or a goal to achieve. In social play, the players easily create their own context and meanings out of almost nothing and thrive off the group’s collective creativity. Even if we’re all strangers to each other.

McGonigal talks in Reality is Broken about the power of games to create and reinforce bonds even with strangers. While I hesitate to call Tangle a game, the factors that she describes about games’ social aspect apply to the play in Tangle. First, there’s the physical closeness. Touching other people releases oxytocin, a hormone that makes you likelier to trust somebody and form bonds with them. And there is a lot of touching in Tangle, whether it happens while trying to get through the tangle and brushing past four different people or trying to tie up someone while they’re themselves tying you up. Secondly, McGonigal claims that having to face the same constraints and collaborating towards the same goal gives a sort of group empathy rarely encountered in real life. There is no goal or true constraint in Tangle, but the shared experience of being tangled up and having to extricate oneself as well as feeling the effect of everyone’s work from the pull of the strings makes it easier to relate to everyone else that is part of the tangle, in a quick way that is hardly ever achieved by conventional social interactions.

In summary, playing in Tangle is satisfying because of the material used and the ability to create and immediately admire one’s work. The more people play, the more there is fuel for creativity and the more fun Tangle becomes. And finally, leaving Tangle left me feeling warm inside thanks to a successful albeit atypical social interaction.