i’ve decided to post up everything i’ve got and then post my ideas/findings/writing/sketches/etc…

here are the drawing/writing activites i got the kids to do:

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This was the first activity. I wasn’t really sure what the outcome would do for me, but I thought it was an interesting idea, based on the work of Kandinsky and then Ellen Lupton and Abbott Miller. Not only that, I wanted to start the kids off with something easy and fun, to get them motivated for the rest of the activities. As it turns out, I think many of the kids completed the photo section first.

In any case, I thought it was interesting that 4 of the 6 kids all colored the shapes the same colors. I reviewed the order that I attached the crayons, to see if there might be an explanation, and they were included in different orders. I’m not sure this is relevant to my project, but I think it’s really interesting.

Thanks to everyone who completed the survey.

I received about 22 responses from people between the ages of 47 and 21. Of the 22 respondents, 2 people said that, no, line, shape and pattern did not influence the way they played as children. Of the 20 respondents who shared experiences of their pretend play, the majority stated that their pretend play occurred primarily between the ages of 4-9.

I’ve made this mind map to try to find some connections and themes from all of the responses. This map may only be beneficial to my process, but it may be interesting to other people, maybe. I’ve also made an excel of the responses available here: notes-on-pretend-play.

visual research in to more patterns in mike perry’s over & over, a book on hand-drawn patterns.

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visual research on patterns and work with textiles…

I’ve put together a quick survey to find out about other people’s experiences with pretend play as children. The survey is open to adults and children; anybody who wants to share their experiences about play. If you have any questions, I can be reached at ascott@eciad.ca. Thanks for participating!

Thanks to everyone who participated! I’ve closed the survey for now.

Oct 2 » phase 2 presentation/document due
Oct 5-6 » distribute probes to children
Oct 13 » get probes back from children
Oct 16 » analyze results from probes
Oct 23 » sketches, ideations, possibilities for deliverables
Oct 30 » decide on a direction and refine, refine, refine
Nov 6 » phase 3 due, more refining
Nov 13 » send files to production where ever that may be
Nov 20 » work on process book
Nov 27 » finished artefact is back
Dec 4 » finish process book
Dec 9-11 » presentations

While thinking about this idea that formal qualities such as line, shape and pattern could influence the way children play and pretend, I started to think about the way I played as a child. I remember having a large patterned rug in the bedroom I shared with my sisters, and we would play many games over the rug. We would use it to run little cars over it and create out own little worlds and narratives. I didn’t think we were the only kids who did this, so I asked a few people about their experiences as children. Another person had a similar experience with a striped rug, where her and her friends had a created a sort of jumping game using the lines for different purposes. This idea led me to do some visual research around patterns and other visuals for children.