The Homo Ludens Project

Manuela Johanna Covini

From game to spectacle
(The speculation in the spectacle)
...make a perfect circle

The aesthetic alienation of reality as we know it creates fictions. It is a play with images that seem unfamiliar and that tell of another world. Until now, we have been dictated by the constructs of our mind, but these have disenchanted and destroyed the world, because they were and still are motivated by the belief in progress and prosperity.

In pre-modern societies, many areas of activity were intertwined.
In the transition to a modern, functionally differentiated society, these areas have increasingly separated from each other and differentiated into independent social subsystems.

Thus the game became serious.

Dimensions of appropriation of the world

The game had probably always had social and political dimensions...

Game and Catharsis

Originally, the Greek term was used in medical and religious contexts.

Purification, atonement

It was not until Aristotle that catharsis acquired a philosophical meaning. He uses it to describe the effect of tragedy on the feelings of the spectator.

The staging of the hero's fatal fate simultaneously evokes fear (phobos) and pity (eleos), feelings that even today tend to be rejected in reality but are desired in theatre (or film).

Aristotle thus describes in the catharsis that imagination (phantasia) has the power to reverse affects and relieve the soul. By generating intense emotions, the tragic spectacle sensitises and soothes the citizen.

Today, however, we are overloaded with tragic shocks, there is no end to the media inundation with the many worldwide tragedies and we - we are desensitised by it.
By now we have become numb.

The good intention of tragedy - playing with our emotions has turned into the opposite.
The world is one big spectacle.
Now it's all about speculation in the spectacle.
It is said that human beings develop their cultural abilities primarily through play.
It is through play that a person discovers his or her individual qualities, for the experiences gained through play lay out the respective facets of the individual personality. It is believed that through play the constraints of the world can be transcended.
In the process, questions remain open...

It is impossible to reduce the semantic field of the term to a common denominator. Despite all the heterogeneity, there is only one commonality: play requires a certain, inner attitude and is a phenomenon to which no other verb can be ascribed than to play...

Central principles of action that are already inherent in play: Performance and competition....

https://www.kubi-online.de/artikel/non-non-fiction-zur-theorie-praxis-des-spiels-rolle-mimesis-theater-anderswo

The game had probably always had social and political dimensions

Games unfold in radically different ways, questioning how prevailing forms of activity (as work) are to be evaluated in terms of their efficiency and ability in relation to life itself.

A game is based on a mechanism, a method. And is based on formal and conceptual agreements between the players. But a game is also based on the risk of entering a path, far out in places that are actually impossible to navigate.

Unlearn the logic - experience the world beyond rules, formulas, numbers and codes - navigate the unknown

Some thoughts on the term "territory"

When does a territory turn into a playing field?

A short interruption:
The slaveholder camouflaged his dependence, his parasitism, by various ideological strategies. Paradoxically, he defined the slave as dependent.
Der Sklavenhalter tarnte seine Abhängigkeit, sein Parasitentum, durch verschiedene ideologische Strategien. Paradoxerweise definierte er den Sklaven als abhängig.

Google offers this definition of the term playground: an area designed for children to play in outside, especially at a school or in a park. As if only children were playing...
Playgrounds symbolize childhood and a yearning for freedom to explore, learn and understand the world around you. Cambridge Dictionary expands the term: A playground is a place where a particular group of people enjoy themselves.

That is really sweet.

Game and community (many Homo Ludens): Casual socialbility

An example: Football generates forms of so-called "post-traditional communalisation" and "casual socialbility". Self-attribution and belonging to such forms of community is no longer based on common ancestry or origin as in traditional forms, but rather on shared interests, concerns and values.

Introduction

In pre-modern societies, many areas of activity were intertwined. In the transition to a modern, functionally differentiated society, these areas have increasingly separated from each other and differentiated into independent social subsystems.Thus the game became serious.