IN DE FENSE OF UR BAN PLAY.

April 2023. Thesis work. Advisor/Prof. Laura Miller.

The city of endless production and consumption must be challenged through active participation in the public realm, by playfully reimagining the city with spaces and itineraries of one’s own interest and belonging. At the same time, things in the city are not static – they are full of a mysterious potential energy and are able to meaningfully affect onlookers, users, creating an instantaneous network of gazes between object-agents, humans, and stimuli. Not only are we unaware of other things’ potential as actors in their environment, we are also often blind to the trajectories of what we call “objects” due to seeing them as dull use-items merely to be interacted with, activated by, and disposed of by a “vibrant” being.