{"id":17756,"date":"2012-11-29T23:57:43","date_gmt":"2012-11-29T23:57:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=17756"},"modified":"2013-12-21T16:17:56","modified_gmt":"2013-12-21T16:17:56","slug":"on-the-hipbone-and-sembl-games-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=17756","title":{"rendered":"On the HipBone and Sembl games: update"},"content":{"rendered":"

[ brief intro by Charles Cameron<\/strong>, then shorter version of Dr. Cath Styles<\/strong>‘ presentation of Sembl at the National Digital Forum in New Zealand, 20 November 2012 ]
\n.<\/p>\n

Charles writes:<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’ve been working for almost twenty years on the development of a playable variant on Hermann Hesse<\/strong>‘s concept of the Glass Bead Game<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

It’s an astonishing idea, the GBG — that one could build an architecture of the greatest human ideas across all disciplinary boundaries and media — music, religion, mathematics, the sciences, anthropology, art, psychology, film, theater, literature, history all included — and it has engaged thinkers as subtle as Christopher Alexander<\/strong>, the author of A Pattern Language [See here<\/a>, p. 74]. Manfred Eigen<\/strong>, Nobel laureate in Chemistry and author of Laws of the Game<\/a> [see here<\/a>], and John Holland<\/strong>, the father of genetic algorithms [see here<\/a>].<\/p>\n

Here’s Hesse’s own description of the game as a virtual music of ideas<\/strong>: <\/p>\n

All the insights, noble thoughts, and works of art that the human race has produced in its creative eras, all that subsequent periods of scholarly study have reduced to concepts and converted into intellectual values the Glass Bead Game player plays like the organist on an organ. And this organ has attained an almost unimaginable perfection; its manuals and pedals range over the entire intellectual cosmos; its stops are almost beyond number.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My own HipBone Games were an attempt to make a variant of the game that would be simple enough that you could play it on a napkin in a cafe, and has in fact been played online — and more recently, my friend Cath Styles<\/strong> has adapted it for museum play, and introduced the basic concept and our future hopes in a presentation at the National Digital Forum 2012<\/strong>, New Zealand — which you can see very nicely recorded in Mediasite<\/a> format. <\/p>\n

Do take a look — Cath makes a first-rate presentation<\/a>, and I love the Mediasite tech used to capture it.<\/p>\n

Since the slides are shown in a small window concurrently with Cath’s presentation, I’ve edited her presentation for Zenpundit readers, and reproduced many of her slides full-size with some of her commentary below.<\/p>\n

**<\/p>\n

\"Sembl,<\/p>\n

Cath speaking:<\/strong><\/p>\n

In its first form, Sembl is an iPad game, called The Museum Game, at the National Museum of Australia. We\u2019ve just released it in beta as a program for visiting groups.<\/p>\n

Cath then talks about feedback from children and adults about their experience of playing the game. Some kids homed in on the principle of resemblance, others emphasised the social side of the game. She talks, too, about their teacher, and her observations about the ways the game engaged her kids.<\/p>\n

She then shows us various Sembl gameboards for iPad:<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Sembl<\/p>\n

\"Four<\/p>\n

Cath speaks:<\/strong><\/p>\n

But The Museum Game is just one form of Sembl. The Museum Game is played in real time, on site, and players take photos of physical objects to create nodes on the board.<\/p>\n

The next step is to make a web-based form, that you could play at your own pace, and from your own place. Then, Sembl becomes a game-based social learning network<\/em>, which amplifies the personal value of the game \u2013 it becomes social networking with cognitive benefits.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s the bigger picture \u2013 of humans as a community \u2013 that I most want to explore: Sembl as an engine of networked ideas, or linked data.<\/p>\n

Charles notes: I’m skipping the educational part — and the bit about my own role in the game’s development, to get to the core of her presentation as I see it: the cognitive facilitation it provides<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Cath again:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Another way of saying this is that the Game provides a structure and impetus for dialogue, between the museum and visitors, between visitors and things, among visitors and between things. And this is not dialogue in the sense of an everyday conversation. It\u2019s deeper than that. It\u2019s a mutual experience of looking both ways, simultaneously.<\/p>\n

Cath next quotes David Bohm<\/strong>, the eminent quantum physicist:<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"to<\/p>\n

Cath speaks:<\/strong><\/p>\n

For Bohm, dialogue means holding several points of view in active suspension. He regarded this kind of dialogue as critical in order to investigate the crises facing society. He saw it as a way to liberate creativity to find solutions.<\/p>\n

Cath then drops in an important topic header:<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Toward a game-based social learning network<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

Cath:<\/strong><\/p>\n

The concept of Sembl, in its deepest sense, is social learning \u2013 game-based social learning. In its first instantiation, it is game-based social learning in a museum and \u2013 if things turn out as I hope they will \u2013 from next year it will be playable at any other exhibiting venue that has the infrastructure and the will to host games \u2013 galleries, libraries, botanic gardens, zoos and so on.<\/p>\n

\"network<\/p>\n

A web-based form of Sembl can generate linked data with a difference. It\u2019s linked link data<\/em>, and quite different to normal linked data.<\/p>\n