The True Meaning of Play Created by Brett Sanderlin
Collected Works Description For DIG 401, we had to create 5 “Hacks” throughout the course of the semester. When looking at these hacks at first glance, they’re all centered around different main ideas and seem to not have much connection to one another, but that is simply not true. Each one of these hacks are connected by one major theme, creativity. Each and everyone one of these hack focus on using play and creativity to challenge serious or past notions. These hacks made me realize that play is something that can be done in a fun and joking manner, but it can also be done in a way that makes you learn new things and become a real call to action for serious manners. Now let’s take a look at these hacks and what they’re all about!
Makey, Makey Revolution!
This piece explores the idea of play. We used a Makey, Makey board and connected them to pieces of foil and a game on our laptops called Friday Night Funkin’ to make our own version of the game Dance Dance Terrible. This piece made us really explore the relationship between physical world and technology. This dance board we created really allowed for players to feel immersed into the game they were playing.
Flog Excerpt
“At first we were not sure how to make it to where we could continue the circuit while stepping on our make-shift dance floor. The only way we found that would work was if we were to step on them barefoot, and we obviously did not want to be barefoot while presenting our project to the whole class. To work around this dilemma, we ended up taping aluminum foil to the bottoms of our shoes.” https://bsanderlindig401.dcreate.domains/flog/flog-2-january-31st-2025/
Go Fix!
This hack dives into the idea of critical play. When most of us think of “play,” we think of very unserious fun and games, but this does not always have to be the case. Critical play is the idea that a game should have some sort of stance and challenge some sort of systematic belief. My partner and I’s game of “GO FIX!” does just that. We remixed the classic game “GO FISH!” to bring awareness to how unfair the health care system is to people all around the world.
Flog Excerpt
“The general rules and function of the game is very similar to that of the original “Go Fish!” Each different type of card represented something different. One set was a health issue, one was different forms of treatment, one was bad luck cards, and one was good luck cards. The goal of the game is to match your health illness cards that you draw with its desired treatment.” https://bsanderlindig401.dcreate.domains/flog/flog-5-february-21-2025/
Underground Net
For this project, I focused on repurposing software. We were tasked with taking a for of existing software, and repurposing it to challenge its original intended purpose. For this, I took Google Docs and challenged its very professional, serious usages and turned it into a social media platform. Doing this allowed for me to turn Google Docs into a much more fun, social centered form of software.
Flog Excerpt
“At first this seemed like it would be somewhat of a daunting task as I felt like there were not many feature within Google Docs that would provide much versatility apart from just typing on a blank document, but once I got to playing around more and diving deeper into the feature of this software, I found that this was not true… The features of Google Docs allow for a lot of fun aspects that really never get tapped into because I feel as though users are constantly user the platform for more professional forms of work.” https://bsanderlindig401.dcreate.domains/flog/flog-7-march-7-2025/
The Evolution of Protests for Racial Discrimination
For this project, I made a video and uploaded it to YouTube. We were tasked with creating some form of a remix to find “the beauty of second use” and recover “undiscovered public knowledge.” I took video clips and photos from various different news sources, YouTube videos, documentaries, etc. and cut them in a way to tell the story of how protests have shifted from the Civil Rights Movement to the Black Lives Matter Movement. The way in which these videos were put together really highlighted both the similarities and the differences in these two different movements.
Flog Excerpt
“I was also struggling at first trying to figure out what editorial moves I should make to help get my message across better, but I ended up decided to keep the editing to a minimum and make it more straight forward. This was intentional as the topic of my video was very serious and I felt like it would have been disrespectful to make a ton of edits to my video that would add comedy or something of that nature. I thought it was best for my message to get pushed through with less editing.” https://bsanderlindig401.dcreate.domains/flog/flog-11-april-11-2025/
Google Net
This project was a revisiting of my third project, “Underground Net.” This point in this project was to really hone in on what I wanted my project to really be about. The first time I worked on this project, I feel like did the exact opposite of what I wanted to do when it came to reimagining Google Docs. This second time around, I utilized more features of Google Docs and was able to create a much more polished, well thought out version of my social media platform, “Google Net.”
Flog Excerpt
“Instead of just making it “bigger,” I decided to take a step back and look at the main principles of my project. Initially, I wanted to make Google Docs in to a social media platform by utilizing its more playful features. I wanted to do this because I feel like oftentimes, Google Docs is seen in a very serious and professional light. In my first go-around at this project, I realized that in doing this, I completely ignored the whole professional side of Google Docs. I felt like instead of repurposing Google Docs, I completely ignored all of its original features and tools, which is not what I wanted to do at all.” https://bsanderlindig401.dcreate.domains/flog/flog-12-march-2-2025/
Link to project: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19yRnv_9fjXZEqTqIeo5zNYJU33-64mN50bMNDWj6HSo/edit?usp=sharing
