Fade to Play

We can dance if we want to
We can leave your friends behind
‘Cause your friends don’t dance and if they don’t dance
Well they’re no friends of mine
I say, we can go where we want to
A place where they will never find
And we can act like we come from out of this world
Leave the real one far behind
And we can dance

–Men without Hats

For those of you in Toronto (which rocks compared with Vancouver), there is an opportunity for re-claiming of public space as noted by the Spacing Wire.

I WANT RHYTHM returns this weekend for another afternoon of free spiriting it up, this time at Yonge and Gerrard. If you’re unfamiliar with this open-invite public dancing party, you can read more about it here.

I WANT RHYTHM #8
Sunday, Jan 7
2:30 pm
NW Corner, Yonge and Gerrard

Relevance: What makes one urban city conducive to street activities and games compared with another? Why is Toronto such a hotbed for events while Vancouver or Halifax are not? What role does culture play?

Jane at DiGRA 2005

Jane McGonigal whom I met at DiGRA 2005 in Vancouver (one of the highlights of my graduate experience), is in the ContraContraTimes as noted on her blog entry. I would love to go back in time to be able to play I love Bees because I feel being in Canada, I somehow missed the boat.

And for a generation that’s dabbled in games like these, expectations have changed.

“It’s a sandbox where you can create anything you want,” McGonigal said. “And this sense that the world is flexible is trickling back to people’s feelings about the real world. Why aren’t the physical spaces in the real world as social as the areas in (the game)? You develop a taste in people to want to have a physical impact — and it’s good for democracy. The question is, how can we make games that improve culture?”

That’s what McGonigal will be exploring at the MacArthur Foundation and a Palo Alto think tank, the Institute for the Future, beginning this month. On hiatus from the land of the “Bees,” she’ll be designing games that will allow people in 2007 to temporarily inhabit future worlds, merge intellects and solve problems far, far outside any box.

She is someone I will be definitely following when she begins work at the Institute for the Future.