Blue: Systems and Stereotypes

This first week back from spring break and last official week of Exploration, Blue dove deep into thinking about systems and stereotypes.On Monday and Tuesday, we had a visiting Teaching Artist from Southern Exposure Gallery, Claire Rabkin.Backstory/Gesture to the Near FutureRobby Herbst is an artist who makes art about games. Over the next few months, Southern Exposure will be hosting a few events that feature his work and also place him in conversation with other Bay Area artists and critical theorists. Claire is working with area students respond to Robby's games by hosting workshops where we play the games and then create our own. The material generated from the workshops will also be in a youth exhibition at the gallery.What?! This is such an awesome opportunity for the students Brightworks! I connected Claire with Blue, and some amazingness happened.To get warmed up, we played one of Robby's games called Grabster. Grabster is a lot like Twister (it uses the same game board), but with two exceptions. The game board is cut into pieces, and each of the colors have a civil right inspired label on them: free speech, safety, jobs, education.The game also starts a lot like Twister, except some of the rules are ambiguous. Can we move the pieces? Sure. Can we prevent other people from touching the pieces? Sure. Can we form alliances and make enemies? Sure.During the first few minutes of the game, craziness ensued! Folks ran off with the game board, and on the chaos of the barrel-ridden cork floor, kids were barricading themselves off, chasing one another, and also tucking the game board in their pockets. After this initial explosion, it became evident that the game was less fun than originally thought. Once a pod of people had at least one of each color game piece, the interaction was basically over. No one cared anymore if everyone had access to all four colors.After much critical discussion of what made the game fun and not fun, we used Robby's formula to make our own games: Find a system in society that has distinct rules, and then use those rules to create a board game of our own.In true Brightworks fashion, this prompt that was supposed to fill two afternoons turned into a week-long exploration of board game prototypes. The Blue Band split into three groups and each group developed a wildly different game. They are still working on their projects, and I'm excited to share that the materials will be hung in the gallery at Southern Exposure. (More info to come as we get closer.)Meanwhile, have I mentioned this is the end of the Exploration phase?(Declarations. Human Arc Projects. Elaborate Flowcharts.) While thinking about games, Blue is also deep in brainstorming......to be continued.