Artist Statement:
As described in my proposal, I wanted to leverage the name and assets of my last card game, Dinglehopper, in a physical space as an intervention. As Dinglehopper relied on an interesting environment to begin with in its initial format, I felt it would be an interesting thing to use a physical medium to call people to action in redefining the objects around campus. It also could be used to possibly stir interest in the card game, which I was very pleased with, and would like to pursue further.
The core of the experience in designing this intervention was the call for players to act in a way that they may normally not consider: redefining objects they see every day. While we as creatively thinking beings often will look at an unknown item and ponder its purpose, rarely do we consciously look at something familiar in the same light as a new object. We bring our preconceived notions to bear in almost every interaction we have with the items around us, and that can lead to mental stagnation. Dinglehopper exists to shake things up, and to get us as creatives looking at objects as if they were brand new to us.
Documentation and Results:
Dinglehopper, while a fun card game with a lot of potential, apparently does not elicit a great response in the physical space.
I probably underestimated how little time people actually spend reading posters, and even the ones who did stop to read it apparently did not interact with it. Even the friends who I begged to use the hashtag to seed the Twitter account apparently did not; proof of this is that the hashtag #DinglehopperNU remains unused after 6 days of existence, and dinglehoppergame.tumblr.com remains with only myself as a follower. To remedy this in the future, I think rather than using a hashtag, I would link them directly to the Twitter page to follow and Tweet at. Perhaps I would also remove the Tumblr from the equation entirely, as fewer people Tumbl than Tweet, and having it on the poster might have confused players.
I think one of the other major issues that arose in this experiment was poster removal. Several of the posters I had put up in Ryder Hall were not there on Thursday when I checked on them, likely taken down by facilities between Tuesday and Thursday. Perhaps with more time I would have been able to get more approval for pasting them up in public places and not have them taken down, but we’ll likely never know.
I have updated the poster for future game endeavors to direct people to Tweet to @DinglehopGame rather than use the hashtag, and while I don’t have time to post it at Northeastern before this assignment comes to a close, I will see if I can get any feedback from other universities in the future. In any case, photo documentation by me does exist that the original posters were there (not all are pictured here; click images to view full-sized). The Tumblr and the Twitter also will remain up, just in case I decide to start a marketing campaign for the card game in the future.
