Playgrounds

PTTP is about creating playgrounds. Playgrounds for everyone to play in. Although these playgrounds exist in the physical world, you don't play on them by climbing all over them - you play using some kind of digital interface - which gives a lot of different ways to play.

If this is too much of a nebulous and abstract concept for you to grab hold of - then the PTTP Media Sandbox commission is about making one, as an example, which will give you a much better idea of what this means in reality.

I like to think of this from the point of view of four different types of people, or roles:

The Designer

The person (or people) who design the playground. Although they have some ideas of how it might be played with - they need to make the playground open. When it's finished, they're going to have to, "give it away" and see what people do with it.

The Players

People who play (obvious, huh?) - using whatever kinds of digital interfaces that are available.

The Audience

The people who watch. Any player who is waiting their turn to play will almost certainly be a member of the audience. (No, I'm not telling you anything ground-breaking, yet.)

The Geeks

(It's ok, it's not a pejorative term if I am one myself.) These are people who design new interfaces for players to play with. It might be an interface that lets more than one person play at once. Or that uses some aspect of the environment to control the playground. Or some new physical interface, (dance mats?), which players can play on. The interesting thing from a geek's point of view - is that they don't have to ask permission from the designer to create a new interface. They simply queue up like any other player. Sometimes, the geek might be the designer in a different role or sometimes they will be a player who has an interesting idea about how they want to play.