design are, which makes defining the design much more difficult. From a technical point, the system should provide interaction opportunities that stimulate players to interact, and move, and shape their play. At the same time though, as an open-ended play environment, the design should not explicitly provide games or narratives.
As we begin to understand how to approach this design process, the role of the partners involved in this project also becomes clearer. Almende, for instance, as one of the technical partners in I-PE, are investigating how the data gathered from the play environment can be used to analyse the behaviour of players. With this knowledge, Almende may come up with new software solutions that can be incorporated in the next iteration in I-PE. The creative partners, Driessens and Verstappen, are supporting our design process by exploring the opportunities our prototypes offer and providing us with valuable examples, to be further discussed in the following article. We believe that traditional approaches to the design process might no longer apply. Designers need to collaborate with partners from a very early stage, incorporating their vision and knowledge during each step of the process and, together with partners, define their roles.
It is not often that we, as artists, get the opportunity to play a role in a larger group of designers. So, when TU / e invited us to participate in the I-PE project, we were interested in the concepts it explores, of open-ended play, of emergent behaviour, and of decentralised cooperation.
For some time now, we have worked on developing systems that create creativity, that is to say, systems that serve as fertile ground for creative processes to arise and flourish. Many of our projects involve massive interactions of simple components and simple rules. These interactions often lead to unplanned and unforeseen complex and dynamic wholes, with intricate features and global effects. With the FlowSteps prototypes, we recognised an interesting opportunity to experiment with possible rules and behaviours. We have begun implementing a computer simulation of a set of 50 FlowSteps which allows us to experiment rapidly with the possibilities in a relatively easy way. We stay close to the hardware in question so that we can eventually transfer the simulated FlowSteps algorithms to the actual prototype play elements.
Pepijn Rijbout— 1974 p. rijnbout @ tue. nl
. PhD candidate Eindhoven
University of Technology, Industrial Design, User Centred Engineering. Member CRISP project I-PE
Crisp Magazine # 1
16