Tag: play

25% PhD Seminar: Imagining Non-Speciesism

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After a bit more than 1,5 years of PhD-ing, next week it’s time for my 25% seminar. It will take place on May 2nd at Malmö University (10.15-12.00). I will present the current state of my research which includes a theoretical framing as well as some ongoing design projects that involve cats, dogs, ants, and penguins. After this talk, there will be a discussion on my work together with Prof. Maria Hellström Reimer.

In the seminar I will be drawing from my newest paper. Part of this text will be published soon in a special issue on the topic of ‘Utopias’ in a journal called Antae. Please find the abstract for my talk below. Let me know if you’re interested in receiving the full text and/or attending this seminar!

Screen Shot 2017-04-04 at 15.32.21

Title of the Talk: Imagining Non-Speciesism

Abstract  

We live in a world where (non-human) animals are killed and abused in numbers that are almost beyond comprehension. This killing is ubiquitous and omnipresent, and yet largely invisible to most people. Once we come to the realization that the normalization of animal oppression is something that we should oppose, envisioning futures that abandon ‘speciesism’ requires an almost unimaginable rethinking of our current society. Yet, resistance and alternative practices do exist. These forces consist of alternative opinions, attitudes, feelings, meanings, and values, which are not considered to be the norm, but can somehow still be accommodated and tolerated within dominant culture.

In this modest approach towards imagining non-speciesist futures – which invites serious ethical consideration of animals – I aim to bring those under-emphasized and hidden alternative perspectives to light in order to make them more valid and more real as practices that counter hegemony. By paying attention to existing philosophies and personal affective accounts, this project highlights alternatives and possibilities for designers/artists, in the broadest sense of the word, to imagine and shape futures that are utopian, not just for humans, but for animals as well. I conclude by arguing and exemplifying how shared encounters with animals that are open to surprises, joy, and playfulness can inspire us to re-negotiate relationships with other beings. In this set-up, we can explore alternative scenarios, practice our sensitivity, develop empathy, and try out different realities together with other animals.

Penguins interacting with video games

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Today I read on Polygon that the Aquarium of the Pacific in the U.S. started to use iPad games as a form of enrichment for their Magellanic penguins. In an interview with Cool Hunting, Aviculturist Sara Mandel explains how she originally got an iPad game for her cats, and decided to try it out on the penguins too. To her surprise they found it interesting and different penguins from the group started to interact with it. For some of the penguins, interacting with the iPad became part of  their daily enrichment routine. By taking part in the interaction as human being as well, Sara Mandel found new ways to check upon the penguin’s physical and mental well-being while they interact with the game.

I think it would be great to see game developments that are specifically focused on these type of animals. Rather than interactions that are originally designed for cats, the design for penguins could open up for many different opportunities that might be even better suitable for penguins in captivity. It would be interesting to try out under-water interactions, bigger touch screens, multi-player games (for penguin-penguin or penguin-human interaction), and games with objects that are already familiar to the penguins. By looking at the Magellanic penguins’ natural curiosity and playful behaviour a hole new range of interaction design could become possible.

Dogscotch – Global Game Jam 2014

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For the Global Game Jam 2014 we made a digitally augmented variant of hopscotch, called Dogscotch, that can be played together with a dog. In the activity of play, humans can form complex abstractions and embrace structured rules to experience games. We often use our imagination while playing games; dogs just perceive the environment the way it is. These two opposing perceptions come together in this game, created in 48 hours.

We interpreted the global theme of this gamejam from the perspective of a dog:

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are” (Dog, 2014).

The question that remains is whether the dog-player is actually playing or not. Play in animals can be recognized according to different behavioral elements; some of these are clearly visible in this video (wagging tails, curiosity, and interaction with toys). However, the use of food as reward leads to an extrinsic motivation that highly influences the behaviour of the dog.

We are sure that the dogs had fun. They joined voluntarily and spent active time together with their owners. We believe this development in experimental games proposes interesting questions and explores new areas of play in non-humans.

Credits:
Alex Camilleri – @AlexColorblind
Michelle Westerlaken – @colombinary

music: Ratatat – Shempi

More details on http://globalgamejam.org/2014/games/dogscotch

Animal Computer Interaction on National TV

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Yesterday evening during the Dutch TV program De Wereld Leert Door (The World Keeps on Learning) game professor Marinka Copier from the HKU (Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht) explained more about the Playing with Pigs project I wrote earlier about on this blog.

The show is aired in Dutch but I wrote a summary in English below.

dwldscreenshot

Game professor Marinka Copier is leading a research for new game opportunities on the HKU. This includes the challenge of finding a way to allow human an animal to play together. Since the Netherlands is a leading country in the field of game development, according to Marinka there is a logical connection with scientific research that provokes a change in behaviour through games. This is what the research on the HKU is focused on. This project is carried out in collaboration with multiple academic disciplines including applied philosophy (Clemens Driessen),biology, medicine, education, and entertainment.

The HKU is developing a videogame for pigs. This project was started because of the EU law that prescribes environment enrichment in the living environment of pigs. The farming industry is looking for ways to enable this with the right materials. Marinka shows different elements that are currently used in sheds, such as ‘Pig Chewing-gum’, a chain that resembles pebble stones the pigs like to chew on, or pinewood sticks, also for the pigs to chew on.

The development of videogames for pigs requires a different kind of approach. This has first been shown in the nineties by Stanley Curtis, who researched a computer game designed for apes on pigs (video footage of this is shown at 00:04:01 ). In this game the pig needed to use the joystick to move the cursor into a white area. The pig was doing this to earn a reward in the form of food (an extrinsic motivation). In this research the pigs were better at this task than dogs and also learned it faster than apes.

The idea for a videogame for pigs developed by the HKU came from a farmer. The goal of the game is to move the pig towards a specific area. This is done by showing light-bulbs on a glass wall that the pigs can follow with their nose. The player is in control of moving the light-bulbs and gains more points if he succeeds in bringing the pig to the target area. In this game the pig is motivated through intrinsic motivation to play. This means that the research (described as ‘research through design’) focused on finding out how the pigs responded to certain sensor triggers such as playing keyboard in the shed, showing moving images, providing contact with different objects, and finally offering play with laser lights. Then they discovered that pigs like to play with light in the same way that cats like to do this. According to Marinka, this was not yet discovered by animal scientists, which means that through design it is possible to get more insights into other fields of knowledge as well.

The game will be playable for people from their own home next year. The purpose of this game on the human side is to trigger questions. All pigs with which the player is allowed to play eventually go to the slaughterhouse and it is left open to the player on how to cope with this. Maybe it will provoke a change in behaviour? Or maybe the meat will taste better with pigs that have played this game? Or the score of the game can be displayed on the package of the meat? This might sound heartless, but it enlarges the impact of the game and the connection with different scientific areas. This project wants to trigger durable changes in behaviour with actual play.

The project can be followed online. Next to this the exposition ‘Ja Natuurlijk‘ will open on the 14th of March in ‘Gemeentemuseum Den Haag’ in which, next to Pig Chase, more projects related to humans and animals can be seen.

The program closes with Marinka giving a tweet about her research to the next generation: ‘Challenge: do you want a durable change in behaviour? Create a playful society.

Digitally mediated human-animal interaction with Sphero

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I recently discovered a nice playful example of an artefact that could function as a digital mediator between human-animal interaction: Sphero. A durable robotic ball that you can control from a smartphone or tablet (supported on both Android and IOS). This video shortly explains it:

It already offers a large amount of functions and entertainment (think about gaming, light, music, and augmented reality apps) Sphero is engineered so developers can create applications themselves with the Full API and Mobile SDK for IOS and Android. This makes is specifically suitable for innovation in playful human-animal interaction. Furthermore, it could facilitate the development of prototypes for further research towards digitally mediated human-animal interaction.

Some fan-made and Sphero videos already show how Sphero evokes the curiosity and playfulness of cats, dogs, and yes, to some extent even bunnies:

(uploaded by Sphero official Youtube channel)

(uploaded by d2looo)

(uploaded by Sphero official Youtube channel)

Biotic Video Games

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Ingmar Riedel-Kruse, a physicist at Stanford University, is doing research towards the development of ‘biotic’ games.

According to this article on the Stanford News website the research group developed a video game in which a player’s actions influence the behaviour of living micro organisms (such as paramecia) in real time – while the game is being played.

The goal of this project is to show the biological processes of these organisms and have fun at the same time.

Riedel-Kruse emphasized that these single-celled organisms do not have a brain or the capacity to feel pain. “We are talking about microbiology with these games, very primitive life forms”. However, these type of games could be a tool to stimulate philosophical discussions about where one could draw this line.

The full article can be found here.

Inter-Species Play

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One of the main elements I established in my research so far is that many animals (including humans) play. I emphasized that this is always a free and voluntary activity since we can never force an animal to play. It is therefore a very suitable concept to embrace when we want to design technical artefacts that facilitate human-animal play.

Next to this, it is discovered that animals use certain signals to communicate their intention to play so that the invited animal does not confuse playful behaviour with actions such as fighting or mating, which show overlapping types of behaviour (such as biting, mounting, or producing certain sounds). A very clear example of this is the play bow we can observe in social play among dogs. However, according to Pierce and Bekoff (2009), the social lives of animals have evolved many examples of communicative signals that help getting along with each other and remain close and generally peaceful relationships. In animal play this includes signals such as self-handicapping, where the animal compromises its behaviour patterns or role-reversing by, for example, a dominant animal that makes dramatic roll over on its back.

According to the same article of Pierce and Bekoff (2009) there are four basic aspects in animal play: “Ask first, be honest, follow the rules, and admit you’re wrong. When the rules of play are violated, and when fairness breaks down, so does play.”

The question I am interested in at this point is how play between different animal species (including humans) can be facilitated. How could we communicate playful intentions according to the rules that make social play possible in inter-species interactions? What are the rules? And which animal species are most suitable in this case?

When looking at inter-species play, for example in the videos below, we can observe that, next to all the cuteness, in many occasions play interaction and communication of signals between different animals seem to be understood well enough to continue playing. Play facilitates a mutual understanding due to the shared interaction and response to signs, cues, and behaviour which allows specific species to understand others up to a level that enables them to perform playful activities together. This is exactly what we need for the successful design of playful technical artefacts for human-animal interaction.

 

(Image by _tar0_)

Fish “Play” Video Games?

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Virtual reality and simulations created for animals could help scientists in studying animal behaviour using new research methods. Even though researchers can never be sure on how animals perceive the world, the environment, and therefore also the simulation of it, a virtual environment provides a certain amount of control and the possibility to exclude (potentially) influential variables.

An example of how virtual reality helps in animal behaviour research is recently published in the Science journal. At Princeton University, researchers have developed a digital application projected into a fish tank that simulates prey for the bluegill sunfish.

In this so called “game” the red dots (representing prey) moved in different ways and it was found that they were less likely attacked by the bluegill sunfish if they moved in group formation. This experiment provided the researchers with more control over the parameters and the coding enabled random formation and movement of the dots. New plans include the development of a 3D environment.

Other examples of digital simulations for studying animal behaviour include cockroaches moving in simulated forests, male moths tempted by virtual female olfactory cues, mice navigating in a virtual maze, and zebrafish chasing virtual objects.

The use of virtual reality and digital simulations for animal behaviour research brings up two main questions for me:

– How do these animals perceive their environment and is this somehow comparable with their perception of reality?

– And is there any reason for the connection of this experience for the animal with ‘play’ or (video) ‘games’ as exemplified in this BBC message or questioned in this article?

I think we should be very careful in connecting concepts such as ‘reality’ or ‘play’ to these experiments, since drawing conclusions based on superficial anthropomorphic statements, such as fish playing video games, could prevent us from actually acquiring a closer understanding of the animal.

(Image by Charles&Clint)

Homo Ludens 2.0

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Dutch philosopher and academic Jos de Mul wrote an interesting article published in the Volkskrant (November 2010) in which he reviewed Johan Huizinga’s book Homo Ludens in the current experience economy, that is largely influenced by play – or the ludification of society.

De Mul writes that playfulness has become a life-long attitude and the entire world a playground in our post modern culture. The question this article proposes concerns the downsides of this development in the information society.

Huizinga promoted play as an expression of human freedom (and possibly that of animals), an ability to socially connect to others, and the fact that play seems to be ‘fun’. According to Huizinga, culture is played, in play, and as play. However, writes De Mul, Homo Ludens 2.0 does not only play with, via, and through the computer, but is also played by the computer through its highly addictive elements.

According to De Mul, examples such as propaganda through games, serious gaming, gambling, war games, or sensational and superficial media forms that include game elements show that we can neither encourage nor reject this ludification of society. Play is an expression of freedom, but at the same time overpowers us with its content. Playing is both pretending something as well as serious business.

Although this article is focused on play for human beings, it reminds me of my dog that is fetching tennis balls over and over again until I must decide that it needs to rest for its own good. Or a cat so much captured by playing with a laser light that it keeps on chasing even when the light is not there anymore. What about a dog running around in circles, repeatedly chasing its own tail?

When does play stop being completely voluntary and evolves in addictive, unhealthy behaviour?

(The complete article can be found here)

(Image by Alvimann)

Pig Chase

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This project, carried out by the Utrecht School of the Arts in collaboration with Wageningen University in the Netherlands, researched the complex relationships between pigs and humans through game design. The purpose of this game was to provide pigs with their natural need to play, experience the cognitive capabilities of both human and pig, and facilitate new relations between species. Their next goal is to actually realize the project. The video in this post shows how the game works.

What makes this research project interesting to me is the collaboration between the research areas: game design, animal welfare, and philosophy. Next to this the social purpose to enrich the lives of the pigs through play and thereby improve the animal welfare is a very positive and valuable approach in my opinion. It would be interesting to get a broader understanding of the experience of the animals involved in this form of play and how the interaction with human beings takes influences their lives.

(video: www.playingwithpigs.nl, 2012)

Apps gone wild

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Over the last few months several mobile/tablet applications intended for animal use have caught, not only mine, but a lot of people’s attention indicated by the amount of Youtube views and other buzz created by the videos mentioned in this post:

This Ipad game for cats created by Hiccup is one of the first applications intended for non-human use that got the attention of a large audience. In this very simple game the cat can chase either a digital representation of a mouse or a laser light. By tapping the object with their paws (or other body parts) the cat receives points. So far all the cats and kittens interacting with this application in my presence showed at least an interest in the moving object on the screen, most of them also started tapping the screen, and especially kittens got quite hooked in the chase after a while.

While this game, called Ant Smasher, is actually designed for human beings, the over 6,2 million viewers of this video could see how this bearded dragon interacted with the game. Other videos confirm that certain reptiles have an interest in screen interaction through this application or similar ones.

Next to these examples, there are apps functioning as tools for humans, such as dog whistles, GPS tracking, or training apps, that solely  focus on human needs and preferences, without the animal being aware of the (digital) interaction. Although these tools might come in handy for pet owners, they do not provide (human-)animal interaction or stimulate interaction through play and are therefore not part of the research I am focusing on.

The mobile applications shown in this post are commercially successful examples of how apps could facilitate ‘something’ for non-human species. However it does not provide us with a better understanding of the animal or its physical and mental needs. A lot of questions remain: is the animal actually playing? If yes, how is this form of play stimulated? How does the animal recognize represented digital objects? What does this interaction mean to the animal? Is the animal enjoying the interaction? What is actual enjoyment for an animal? Why does the animal play? How could human beings take part in the interaction? etc. 

I am convinced further research towards digitally mediated (human-)animal interaction can help us in finding answers.

TOUCH project

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image by zachstern

One of the first projects I came across during my graduation research is the TOUCH project: ‘Bringing new Technology to Orangutans for Understanding and Communicating cross-species for greater Harmony‘. This project, carried through by School of Design of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University by Dr. Hanna Wirman, researches the possibilities for facilitating in cross-species interaction and enrichment for orangutans through digital games.

The focus of this project is centered around both human and orangutan and the potential for interaction between these two species. The researchers are aiming for the development of digital games in which humans might be defeated by orangutans through for example visual or short term memory games.

The blog that evolved around the TOUCH project, LUDUS ANIMALIS provides insights and updates on the research as well as an interesting collection of sources on animals, play and a few other animal computer interaction projects.

(Image by zachstern)

Graduation Project Delivered

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After 10 weeks of full-time thinking, reading, and writing, I handed in the graduation documents for my Master in Media Innovation at the NHTV Breda (the Netherlands). Allthough the timeframe was relatively short, it was without a doubt the best and most interesting personal project I worked on during my study. I was able to extensively improve my capabilities as a student and researcher and it provided me with the encouragement and hopefully the opportunity to continue my research in the area of digitally mediated animal interaction.

The main part of this project includes the research thesis: Design Methodologies for Embodied Play in Canine Digital Interaction

This thesis proposes a theoretical framework based on embodied play, a phenomenological approach, and the avoidance of superficial forms of anthropomorphism. Furthermore it provides a critical review of existing literature in the area of animal computer interaction.