Child’s Play

Tanruk Pairoj-BoriboonMFA Candidacy ProposalExpected year of Graduation 2018Department of Graphic DesignVirginia Commonwealth UniversitySpring 2017

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everything seemed possible, when I looked through the eyes of a child. – Nikki Rowe

Abstract“Play is the answer to how anything new comes about,” said Jean Piaget, a Swiss clinical psychologist. This study aims to experiment with the concept of play in design methods with the goal of reducing the serious-ness and formality of the world. The projects have been redefined into playful visual and communicative forms which intentionally reminisce about a childlike perception of reality. I have a child inside me who was/is trying to take over my adult consciousness; she tells me how she sees and feels about the economy, politics, violence, etc. I transform and materialize these intangible visions and feelings into physical presences such as books, poems, tools, video and illustration. It is my hope that this work will stimu-late enjoyment and awaken the child inside all of us.

me and my mother, 1992

I am interested in the play.

I grew up in the absence of social playfulness, but in the presence of a political family; my father worked for the government, my aunts and uncles too. They transformed my house into a meeting space for adults,discussing serious topics that only adults could un-derstand. But for a child, the situation was contextu-ally disturbing. My father was formalistic, he believed that everything should be in the system. To him rigid rules would always make things perfect. Breaking them would result in trouble.

This atmosphere of seriousness inevitably interrupted what should have been a time of curiosity and appropriate play. I often saw my father, my aunts, andmy uncles mentioned in the newspaper. I saw my motherspend hours reading everything. It made me curious to know what she was learning, and what was being talked about. Unfortunately, at that time I could not understand any complex stories—all that I could do, when faced with this world of purely adult concerns, was to peek at people’s unpredictable reactions. This situation somehow took me away from childhood society. I became very independent, but I still wanted to have fun. I tried to understand the concept of enjoyment in my own way.

At this time I didn’t think I had a good connection with people. To find a friend to play with me was to create a chimera. I rather enjoyed playing with my imagination. If I felt I wanted to play with my father’s leather shoe, I would think it was a boat, and I travelled through the ocean by it. I did not need anyone to travel with me. John Bertelsen, Emdrup’s first playleader, said “Play activity must grow from inside and never be directed from outside.” I imagined and played with everyday things, and I had fun. Having fun made me laugh, andleased my stress, so I played with everything around me; toys, chairs, oranges, etc. I looked at things playfully, even though it was absurd sometimes, but provided much enjoyment.

Even today, I have been adapting this concept into my daily life – adding playful layers on the top of a complicating and intense context. My approach is “play with it and enjoy the reality.” I am interested in play, specifically the play that awakens the child inside me. The play that brings me to childhood mem-ories. This play allows me to perceive and experience things in the way of a child. I cannot physically

become a child again—but in my mind, it is quite possible. I believe in the concept of the “inner child” and I want to fully under-stand its structure and how it influences an adult’s life – the biological transformation of the physical body that contrasts with the mind. It can be characterized as a subcon-sciousness. We all have a child inside us, either a negative or positive one.

Ettore Sottsass, an Italian designer and architect says in his essay, When I was a Very Small Boy, “I would like to think that the old happy state that I once knew could somehow be brought back: that happy state in which ‘design’ or art was life, in which life was creativity.” I strongly believe that childhood is precious and we have toprotect it. It is the period when we can think, create, design, and have fun with an absence of stress and limitation. It is analternative path to the happiness. When adulthood comes, why does play seem not to be important anymore? Why do we become so preoccupied with seriousness? Why does every Elementary school have a slide, but not the University? At this time I didn’t think I had a good connection with

people. To find a friend to play with me was to create a chimera. I rather enjoyed playing with my imagination. If I felt I wanted to play with my father’s leather shoe, I would think it was a boat, and I travelled through the ocean by it. I did not need anyone to travel with me. John Bertelsen, the first playleader of Emdrup1, said “Play activity must grow from inside and never be directed from outside.” I imagined and played with everyday things, and I had fun. Having fun made me laugh, and it relieved my stress, so I played with everything around me: toys, chairs, oranges, etc. I looked at things playfully, and even though my thoughts were sometimes absurd, but they provided much enjoyment.

1. Emdrup is a neighbourhood straddling the border between the Bispebjerg and Østerbro district of Copenhagen, Denmark. The first Adventure Playground in the world, opened here, inspired by the Danish landscape architect Carl Theodor Sørensen.

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Oskar Schlemmer’s Bauhaus costume parties (1924-1926)

The Bauhaus, a German Art School found in 1919, teachers and students gave free rein to their creative talents and enjoyment of design. The school promoted a common spirit and the development of the ‘play instinct’. Oskar Schlemmer, a professor in the depart-ment of Theatre, recognized that play was the force that made creativity possible in the first place. The emphasis on play and experimetation as a mean of discovery was fundamental to the Bauhuas curriculum.

Design is a field of free expression, aesthetics, and communication. When children do things differentlythan adults, and that seem illogical, it does not mean they know nothing. Christopher Moore, an American writer of comic fantasy, said “Children see magic because they look for it.” In their world of imagination, everything makes sense – it is the beauty of creative play that adults no longer understand.

Adulthood is a period characterized by having a particular perception of the world. It is a time where the progress of the intellect differentiates reality from fantasy, logic from illogic, and responsibility from ridiculousness. But if we look back to the past, to our youth, play is an essential factor in determining who or what we are today. I move backward and immerse myself again in the fantasy, illogic, and ridiculousness. I see and design in a world as a child again and therefore I design a new definition of the world.

The architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, credits his early exposure to Frobel Blocks (modular wooden forms designed by German educationalist, Friedrich Frobel) as the root of his interest in the architectural process. He wrote: “For several years I sat at the little kindergarten table-top and played with the cube, the sphere and the triangle – these smooth wooden maple blocks. All are in my fingers to this day.”

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Recent WorkFall2016 – Spring2017

“Combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought.”– Albert Einstein

A slide for workers at Ticketmaster Entertainment, Inc.

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Maggie L. Walker

J. Andrew Bowler

Brexton Family

John Mitchell, Jr.

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Play and DeathA cemetery or graveyard is a place where the remains of dead people are buried or otherwise interred. Sometimes, it is defined as a “Sleeping place” full of memories and love, meanwhile, it is also full of sadnesses. Evergreen Cemetery is located on the east side of Richmond, Virginia. It is a historic African-American cemetery that should be as well known and respected as the famed Hollywood Cemetery on the James River. The state of the cemetery is shocking; it is overgrown and most of the graves are invisible.

This project aims to build up recognition of Evergreen Cemetery. I illustrateda playful black and white visual narrative map of the cemetery. It presents the sensitive and significant features of the cemetery’s contents. Playful illustration reduces the dismal connotations of the cemetery, providing gentle access to the horrible stories of neglect that exist there. I used this playful approach to communicate a friendly, but meaningful message, encouraging people to achieve a solidarity of purpose and to help resurrect the disheveled cemetery to be a peaceful sleeping place again.

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Play and IndustryIn this project, I worked through my collection of mending plates. They are the ideal reinforcements for surface joints, made from steel with predrilled holes to specifically

These three dimension imaginary toys aim to encourage those who see them to explore and discover the possibility of construction and learn how to think, build, and distribute things in playful ways. Shape and form are derived from the features of mending plates; rectangle, square, and circle. I merged, divided, and trimmed them to create a series of more complex shapes and forms. The material, from metal to wood, make them light, hand-friendly, and playable. These characters are imaginatively connected without glue following the actual dictates of “real world” mending plates. They are held together with screws, ropes, and rubber bands.

connect wood materials for exten-sion, re-direction, and combination. These works explored the idea of “connection” in a different materials and methods.

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This set of handcrafted posters is a transformation from the imaginary toy project – going from three to two dimensions, from movable to immovable, from innocence to experience, and from white to color. I transferred the function of a mending plate into a paper and focused on making a variety of structures for color paper collage.

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today, i woke up.the day has arrived.

the day i fell downit didn’t hurt, anymore.

the day i ran around,it wasn’t barefoot, anymore.

the day i saw linesi saw wrinkles, next to my eyes.

the day when timeis faster than my mind.

i wish i could playand stay in my childhood.

never come out to see the world.never come out to seek the reality.

just want to laugh, just want to climb the tree,just want to eat the berries, and come back home.

if i could askfor a space,i would ask for a playground. so i could run around, without shoes. so i could fall down, like an innocent bruise.

my voice was innocent.my imagination was, too.

i remembered it did hurt.when i ran and fell down. i cried

looked at my knee.i saw a wound and that’s my first scar.

i ran around,dirty barefoot.i didn’t know, i had to wear shoes.

i remembered it wasn’t new.the day i woke up next to you.

i observed over your face.i was looking at your hands.

i saw my love,i saw my mom.but also lines,next to your eyes.

i was so curiousuntil i realizedyou weren’t innocent, your skin wasn’t, too.

I next wrote a poem to express the intimacy between my current self and my childhood. It presents small phrases and syllables without the complexity of linguistic rules. It evokes meanings within these easy vocabularies. It is also a metaphorical imitation of the syntactic level of a child.

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Play with TrackingHide and Seek is a popular children’s game in which any number of players conceal themselves in the environment, to be found by one or more seekers.The seekers have to close their eyes and count to a given number while the other players hide.

This poster was a quick project, and it was derived from the content of the original children’s book, “how many?” It is a book I composed when I was a provisional student, aiming to let the readers search for hidden animals in each spread. Icons on the poster present the favourite locations and places that we used to hide, along with the familiar phrase from the game, “are you ready?”

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Play and Politics : Monopolitics

2017 begins with the new era of Trump and it is impos-sible to not talk about it. Politics are central to the activities of governments in their attempts to unify and control a country. The Unites States has a per-sistent history of contradiction–it professes equality among its citizens, but maintains two casts separated by privilege: the “black” (decendents of slaves and immigrants from specific countries) and the “white” (those of European descent). In reaction to this reality, I created a book entitled, “mono.”

As a dual citizen, this book aims to present the twoaspects of my perception of living in the United States. It is inspired by the form of the famous board game, “Monopoly,” which demonstrates truths about economics in a fun and relaxed way. Since this country treats me two ways – as an American and a foreigner, my eyes were slowly opened to witness the unex-pected reality that can happen only in the USA. This book demonstrates the truths about politics from my personal experience.

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Play and ConflictThroughout history, children have witnessed miserable, frightening events before they have learned how to accept and understand them. These traumatic events have the power to erase innocence and

take childhood away. In reaction to traumatic experiences, children blur the lines between reality and fantasy. This set of surrealistic collages illustrates a playful contradiction between the two, a war between a child and an army; an encounter between a child and politics, a perception between surface and inside, and between innocence and a catastrophe.

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“When the dream intercepts the reality,and the reality becomes a nightmare.”

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The messages on the sides are the voices that fight against each other —voices of resistance that become a cycle of conflicts. However, children are still children, without an adult consciousness, they dream, perhaps illogically, to overcome sadness and to attempt to resurrect what is lost.

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Play and RulesThis project aims to rediscover thewonders of the first experiences of color and shape combinations in elementary school. I invented a tool called “Overlay Play,” which consistsof a set of ten transparent sheets containing patterns of colorful primary shapes: triangles, squares, and circles. The arrangements can be made overlapping these forms is infinite. It easily allows for the imag-inative generation of childlike visual forms and language. It builds a con-nection and relationship between our mind and consciousness.

“The child is someone who constructs his own moral world view, who forms ideas, that are not the direct product of adult teaching and that are often maintained in the face of adult wishes to the contrary.”– Jean Piaget. This set of characters are somehow familiar from our childhood play and environment. Each part was generated from the natural overlaying of the transparent forms. This childlike set can be used for many different purposes such as creating an illustration for children’s book, the creation of symbols or logos, etc.

These are the scenes from anima-tion gif, presenting the transformation of Peter Pan syndrome, aiming to use for medical explanation. Those playful and colorful forms reduced the seriousness of its diagnosis.

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Play and ArchitectureI have a background in architecture that I left behind when I came to graduate school. I lived in Bangkok, Thailand where everything is influenced by politics and vanity. This has an impact on the urbanization of the country, which results in many unreasonable architecturalrestrictions. I was aware that being an architect in an unstable country was a risk. It became much more serious than I imagined. I decided to repudiate everything about architecture and to move forward as a graphic designer.

This project encourages me to work with architectural principles again. I had a belief that if architecture gave me fear and perplexity, it was a challenge to use my newfound interests in graphic forms to get over it. These designs are conceptual playgrounds based on my favourite characters: Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse,Donald Duck, and Goofy. I intended to connectcompletely opposite things and feelings together: absurdity and seriousness, and the sensibilities of achild and an adult. They were derived from 2D sketches and realized in a set of models. I disassembled the cartoon characters’ iconic elements and transformed them into proportional architectural components. Form, space and scale was then explored and made meaningful.

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Play in Space There always have been forms, functions, and structures.Objects as well as subjects offered up to the senses as accessible and recognizable forms. This project is a continuum of my Play and Architecture work. I was observing everything around me – how was/am I living? I became obsessed with private spaces (rooms) and the relationship among household objects on a grid system. The proportion of everyday objects

allow for certain interactions. I invented a structuralisttoy that allows one to creativity formulate relationships between the space and objects. A chair, table, bed, television, are the geometric foundations of everyday life. Alma Siedhoff-Buscher, a Bauhaus student, said “...every object in the room encourages imagination.” Therefore bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, should be called a “playroom” – why not?

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PrecedentsPlay and the Object : Example of my writings from Graduate Seminar

Vessel : Hide and Seek

“... Five... Four... Three... Two... One..., ready or not, here I come,” is a verbal signal for a popular game “Hide-and-Seek”. The rule is amazingly easy and simple; some go hide, one goes seek. This game becomes a universal children’s activity. I believe everybody has been through this exciting and enjoyable experience. Energy to imagine, energy to keep yourself quiet, energy to run around are limitless. An abandoned land where was full of soil, grasses, and artifacts, behind my house, was my favorite playground to hide and never been sought.

Beautiful artifacts were arranged nicely in the same distance like someone intentionally created a grid system for this abandoned land. None of them had damage. They were pottery but in human scale. Reddish-brown artifacts with a small golden decoration automatically convinced me to get close to them. Huge vessels, massive containers for water, were very magical and magnificent to me when I was just six years old.

Each of them contained emptiness, a full space that was capable of holding a full-body of human. Tall and deep. No fear popped up but inquisitions. My consciousness was back again when I was already in it. A wall-like component surrounded me. Controlled by its space. Clay, the main material which invented this vessel, provided a comfortable temperature which kept me alive. All I heard were just my breathing and a reflection of my movements. It almost completely blocked the sound from the outside. A secure feeling had suddenly increased instead of frightened. It became a private space for playing and hiding.

Neighbor kids and I, we were not even friends, but we still played hide and seek together. For a six-year-old girl, when I was told to hide by strangers, so that was serious. I undoubtedly hid in the vessel. Nobody found me or nobody looked for me, were conflicting truths that I could not find the answer. What I knew was just the vessel held my whole body, shut everything down like I stepped into another dimension. Immensity became limited, noise turned into silence, and the vessel became a shelter. It was probably the similar feeling for a reptile like snake when they want to be safe by staying in a deep hole and probably the same feeling when a cow did not want to get killed, so it hid in a water vessel, according to the news from 2014 2.

Sally Ann 3 profoundly described the art of pottery in a way that I could touch the powerful connection that she has to it ––the way she looked at it, the way she touched, held it two hands. The passion for clays; for their history, flexibility, and aesthetics, remarkably influencedher to be able to communicate with them and surprisingly.. they communicate back to her. She let us experienced the clay, telling us about its speciality that its temperature can adapt to our body’s. I held it, I felt the change. It was warm as my body, and I felt secure. I also grabbed a few vessels she made and covered my ear, it almost entirely blocked the sound, just like the day before. Those phenomena recalled my memory when I spent time in the vessel – the connection I had where it once held my body, not being held like today.

2. Khmer Hot News on December 25, 2013. Magic Cow Is in Stone Jar. The cow was found out staying in a big stone jar. No one knows how could it stay inside.3. Graduate Seminar class offered a fieldtrip to Shockoe Bottom Clay Gallery and Studios to research Sally Ann McKinsey Sisk’s studio. She is a ceremic artist who has been working in clay for over 10 years. http://www.mckinseysisk.com/

1. Paul Rand concept, shape and form2. Karel Martens overlapping, layers, typography3. Bruno Munari narrative, engagement4. Bauhaus puppets emotion, performance, identity5. Wolfgang Weingart structure, system, form

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6. Memphis formal expression, whimsy7. Daniel Buren space, color, scale8. John Hejduk architectural space, rhythm9. Wassily Kandinsky interrelation between color and form10. John Malinoski simple form and color

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Questions

What are the key differences between ridiculousness and rationality? What is gained and lost by emphasizing one over the other?

What are the differences between a child’s and an adult’s perception of reality?

How can a childlike visual language communicate complicated and perplexing subjects in an appropriate way?

How can one create a meaningful visual narrative using only innocent shapes and forms? (such as scribble, primary shapes, and infant syntax?)

How can a frivolous experience be transformed into a logical experience?

What is the relationship between primary forms and shapes, and the perceptual world of a child?

What is the connection between the inner child and adult consciousness?

Due to the syntactic development, children understand first few sentences of conversation, but, they then get overwhelmed. What form of communication might loosen this disconnect? A poem? A song? A sign?

Moving forward

What I hope to achieve is an understanding of play in design methods and systems in relation to the inner child. I would like to bring this exploration to stimulate the enjoyment and to resurrect the innocent child who is hidinginside all of us and hope toelevate this study to be more than my childhood expressions but everyone’s.The relationship between the inner child and the adult consciousness is a key that I would liketo understand profoundly,to challenge my use of play to construct the childlike perception of the world, to reduce the seriousness, to simplify and translate complicated and perplexing surroundings into visual and communicative forms.

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