A Guide
The Interactive Playground is an exhibition made by the WRO Art Center especially for young art-goers such as yourself! Already on stepping inside the gallery you may be in for a surprise. Want to touch anything? Go ahead! Fancy running around and yelling? Be our guest (everything in moderation, of course)! Just have the time of your life and play in any way you like. And play is a great opportunity to learn new things (here you can throw moderation out of the window). The Guide you are holding in your hand will help you find out about all the works created for The Interactive Playground. Not all of them are displayed at this exhibition, but all of them can certainly be an inspiration for you. The works shown here, as well as those other ones which are described in this Guide and will be presented somewhere else at some other time, are meant to stir you interest in the world around you and to encourage you to engage in creative practices at home, at school, and outdoors. Look around! The world is indeed one huge Interactive Playground!
What is The Interactive Playground? Write down a few words that you believe best describe this exhibition:
Even if now you do not know exactly what “interactive� means, when you have seen the show, you will be perfectly capable of deciphering the word. If something is interactive, it encourages you to do things; an interactive work of art does not work and does not make any sense if the audience is not actively involved. Can you imagine The Interactive Playground without kids? After all, interaction occurs not only between you and an artwork, but also between you and other people around.
THE DOG The installation called THE DOG is older than you are. It is already twenty-four years old! It was developed at Wrocław’s Main Studio of the Polish National Television in 1994. When The Interactive Playground was being designed, it was obvious that it could not possibly do without a DOG to guard the exhibition!
An important thing that you cannot see is how the DOG works. In its wooden kennel, besides a TV set showing the animal, there is a computer connected to a motion sensor. Whenever a person crosses in front of the kennel, the sensor detects their presence, and the DOG jumps out on the screen, barking. Although the DOG does not get older, it keeps changing. At the Biennale in 2015, it was given yet another form. The latest version of the DOG comes as a miniature of the installation, which you can put together on your own. You just need a smartphone, the app, and a kennel template to assemble.
1994
For more information, visit our website at wrocenter.pl/pies.
2018
Draw a few mean-looking or cheerful dogs in the empty windows of the kennel.
TEXTURES We discover the world using all our senses, but we tend to forget about it. We often say things like “I’ve seen a beautiful sunset” or “I’ve heard an ear-piercing screech of car brakes.” But when did you last say “I’ve touched an exceptionally soft jumper,” or “I didn’t like that armchair because it was too coarse”? Yet we touch plenty of objects every day, and we do it not only with our hands, but also with our feet, and our bodies in general. The installation called TEXTURES offers you an opportunity to touch various things that come from the natural world, such as wood, moss, and stones. By moving your hand over them, you switch on an animation which shows changing nature.
Build your own laboratory for touch experiments: take a big box and cut out an opening in it, big enough to put your hand inside. Put many small objects of various tactile properties into the box. Make sure to include something rough, something soft, something slick, something hard, something hairy, something heavy, etc. Choose the things everybody knows very well, for example vegetables, toys, cosmetics, clothes, items from nature, and the like. Invite your family and friends to take part in touch tests. Whose hands are most curious about the world?
Find out what frottage means. Put together your own drawing collection of various structures and textures.
THE PLATFORM Usually, one plays an instrument alone and, as a rule, using one’s hands or, sometimes, feet. THE PLATFORM is an uncommon instrument over which several people can run together and play it using their whole bodies. Of course, you can play a particular tune, if it is really your heart’s desire, but isn’t free improvisation far more fun?
Improvising means inventing and performing something – for example a piece of music – live and without planning it first in detail. But you can also improvise in drawing, movement, words, or cooking! Such experiments often bring about quite amazing effects, so why don’t you go for it! Improvise something in any artistic technique for your family or schoolmates. Was it fun?
THE SORCERER Maurice Carême, who wrote the poem entitled THE SORCERER, was born in Belgium and wrote in French. When you read the Polish translation of this French poem, you realize that, depending on the language, the objects and the animals appearing in the poem differ. Translating this poem is some magic, isn’t it? By manipulating illustration plates you can discover successive passages of the poem. Listen carefully to what your peers say on the screen, and find out what it means to be a sorcerer.
Take a crack at translating the poem’s title. Type “sorcerer” into an online dictionary, and select its translations into a few languages you do not know at all. Hungarian, anyone? Or, perhaps, Croatian? And what would “sorcerer” sound like in Hawaiian or Chinese? Have a close look at various alphabets, at signs and characters which are unfamiliar to you.
What words in your language can you compose using the letters in the Polish word CZARODZIEJ (SORCERER)? Write them down below.
TeToKi! The brisk name of the installation is an abbreviation of “Technology to the Kids!� It was designed especially for the jubilee edition of The Interactive Playground because in 2018 we celebrate the tenth anniversary of the show. With the design using only black and white, TeToKi! invites the audience to play with shapes and sounds rather than with colors. All the images you can see on the screens refer to important artworks and techniques employed by artists who work with electronic media. To make images and sounds appear in the gallery, use a shining toy or a flashlight. The black-andwhite world does not have to be boring!
Go and explore other galleries and museums. Start with those in your own town, and then venture further away. Below, write down the names of artists and the titles of their black-and-white works which will catch your eye at exhibitions.
PAINTING This work is similar to TeToKi!, but here you can have a go at colors! Manipulating shining toys, you make variously colored shapes appear on the screen, while the loudspeakers emit spontaneous musical compositions. All this happens thanks to a camera and special software which detect and process movement. Light and shade keep playing with each other, and they have been doing so for hundreds of thousands of years. Whenever something gets in light’s way, a shadow appears. Painters play with chiaroscuro, actors with shadow shows, and you have certainly seen people make shadow animals on the wall with their hands. It can be so much fun to watch the play of light and shade! You can do it during the day and at night, both indoors and outdoors. All you need is a source of light, either a natural one, such as the Sun, or an artificial one, such as a lamp.
Spare a while to pay attention to shadows cast by people, trees, buildings, chairs, and other objects. Collect your own photo or drawing atlas of shadows. Give each item an uncommon title.
VIBRA Everybody knows what ears are for. However, if we take a closer look at our bodies and their capacities, we will find out that we can listen and hear in other ways as well. Sounds can also reach us through what is called bone conduction. This technique is used in the installation entitled VIBRA, but in fact it is primarily applied to produce hearing aids for people with a hearing loss. These devices convert sound waves into vibrations so that hearing-impaired people can receive sounds through their skeleton.
No longer listening with your ears? Good for you! Use ears in another way. Look at these drawings of ears and stop thinking of them as ears. Simply treat them as shapes which can be a labyrinth, a slide, or a part of a landscape. Add various elements to the contours and “deafen� the ear.
BOPI In the Pygmy language, “bopi” is a term for a play area, and in the English slang, for a close friend. And how fitting this is! For the installation called BOPI is nothing else but a place to play with others! Whenever somebody hits the “drum,” various shapes appear on the floor screen, resembling a moonscape or tiny creatures under the microscope.
Produce your own chart for playing outdoors. Think of something really big! You can draw the chart on the ground with a stick or on a pitch with a piece of chalk. Outline at least twenty boxes of various sizes, and invite your mates to play together. Together, come up with a sound code for moving across the chart, and jump from box to box, clapping your hands.
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RGB The title of this installation – RGB – is an acronym of three colors: red, green, and blue. The world consists wholly of colors, but how does it happen that we see them the way we do, rather than in any other way? Everything depends on what we are looking at. If we are looking at a screen, we obtain the entire array of colors by mixing red, green, and blue light.
Look around and put down the first thing you see in color: red: green: blue: cyan: magenta:
Yet if we are reading a book or looking at a poster – that is, something printed rather than screened – we deal with colors that mix in a different manner. In print, the entire color palette is produced by three other colors: cyan (a shade of blue), magenta (purple pink), and yellow. Consequently, the colors in print are abbreviated as CMY.
yellow:
R G B C M Y
Experiment with looking at colors and color mixing. Collect various filters, that is, transparent but colored bottles, document sleeves from folders and binders, plastic cups of various sizes, drinking straws, adhesive tapes, etc. Make various goofy optical tools – spectacles, binoculars, magnifying glasses, spyglasses, and the like.
PASS IT ON Can children develop an interactive installation? Sure thing! This is how PASS IT ON came about. The installation is an outcome of workshops which were held at the WRO Art Center during winter holidays in 2018. It features sounds recorded by children and collages they made, inspired by various aural impressions. PASS IT ON is a music machine which processes twodimensional images into sounds and, additionally, into threedimensional structures.
What picture would you like to see in 3D? What picture would it be nice to hear? Make a few draft drawings, and then close your eyes and try to imagine the sounds and shapes inspired by your pictures.
CHILLOUT CINEMA CHILLOUT CINEMA is an inseparable part of the exhibition. It is an untypical, pillow cinema, where you can lie down and comment on what you see on the screen. You can start watching animated films at any moment you wish, and you do not have to stay till the end at all. It is entirely your call! You should know that it takes a lot of time and work to make an animated film. Each frame of such a film is one still image or drawing. You must make a series of them, with somebody or something arranged in a slightly different position in each. Only when we put several frames one by one can we get an impression of things or people moving. There are various techniques of making animations. They involve drawing, modeling plasticine, manipulating puppets, pouring salt or sand, making cut-outs, etc. Computers and software are also often used to produce animations.
Time for your debut as a film-maker! Start with something simple – for example, a film about mess-making. Take a photo of an empty table, and then put several odd things on it one by one, taking a photo each time you add a new item. View the photos from the first to the last one on the computer. And now, do it the other way round: view the photos from the last to the first one. See, now you have made a film about tidying!
If you feel like watching some other good Polish animations, you can find them online, free of charge, at Ninateka.pl, a portal run by the National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute (FINA): ninateka.pl/filmy/film,bajki
In 2018, The Interactive Playground is celebrating its tenth birthday! We are happy that it has helped develop children’s sensitivity and facilitated access to artworks dedicated to a young audience for so long. See for yourself how much has happened over these ten years!
over 300,000 visitors over 1,000 days on display exhibited in 10 countries put on display at 27 venues
Use these pages for your notes and drawings. Having visited The Interactive Playground, you are certainly buzzing with new, exciting ideas! Write them down so they do not vanish into thin air.
Artists: Paweł Janicki, Patrycja Mastej, Dominika Sobolewska, Zbigniew Kupisz, Magdalena Kreis Concept of the publication and texts: Magdalena Kreis Editors: Viola Krajewska, Małgorzata Sikorska English translation: Patrycja Poniatowska Graphic design: Krystyna Engelmayer-Urbańska, Michał Loba Director of the WRO Art Center: Viola Krajewska Project coordinator: Małgorzata Sikorska
WRO Art Center ul. Widok 7, 50-052 Wrocław, Poland wrocenter.pl vimeo.com/wroartcenter fb/wroartcenter instagram: @wroartcenter For more information about The Interactive Playground, visit our website at: wrocenter.pl/ipz
ISBN 978-83-944401-5-2
This publication accompanies The Interactive Playground exhibition at the Centrum Izolyatsia in Kyiv, Ukraine.
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Partner:
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The project is part of the Promesa: Promoting Polish Culture Abroad 2018 program. It is co-funded by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland and from the budget of the Culture Bridges