(no subject)
Jennifer Lin and Courtney Reeder
Art 311
Professor Ferro
May 8, 2008
Game Intervention: “Hopscotch Race on Ho Plaza”
“Hopscotch Race on Ho Place” a three minute experimental film, explores the reinvention of an ancient game. J. W. Crombie in his essay “The History of the Game of Hop-scotch” reveals to us that “…children’s games are often imitations of the more serious occupations of the grown-ups they see around them, and that a game once introduced is handed down from generation to generation of children long after its original [purpose] has ceased to exist” (Crombie 403). Hopscotch, a game played by children in European countries that Crombie mentions such as “England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, [and] Finland” has been played since in Britain since the ancient pagan Roman Empire. Revisiting this game on the broad side walk of Ho Plaza provides insight into this particular game’s survival over time.
The word “hopscotch” can be broken down into hop and scotch. Hop, thought to mean “to jump” and scotch meaning “to cut or (scratch it out)” as defined in the essay “Hopscotch” by THL Dagonell Collingwood of Emerald Lake provides a brief description of how the game operates. Collingwood tells us that hopscotch was initially intended as a military strength training technique. Soldiers in antiquity would leap courses composed of lines forming boxes that reached lengths of one hundred feet. This exercise improved the speed and accuracy of soldiers’ footwork. Militia still practice this exercise today, only using tires or objects in obstacle courses to enhance soldiers’ movement. Children's adaptation of this exercise introduced a numeric score system and stone tossing as a fun twist to the primary source.
This project helps to uncover insight into the former purposes and adult practices that evolved to become the common children’s game we know today as Hopscotch. Crombie’s thesis attempts to prove that the purpose of contemporary children’s games such as Hopscotch may appear docile and serve merely for pleasure, yet initially possibly provided a technique for serious militaristic benefits.
Installation as a medium innovatively sets the stage for this film, in which the moving figures within the film paint themselves across a semi transparent paper surface adhered to glass. A glass door supports the paper surface, upon which digital video content is projected, alluding to the sensation an tangible object hovering in space. The back door of Tjaden Hall provides the ideal location for the installation, playfully forces students or faculty to take notice of the game regardless of whether they enter or leave the building. Projection on a glass door captures the audience’s attention two fold, enabling the viewer to choose to experience the film from either outside the building and/or within Tjaden Hall’s interior entrance space.
Sound plays an integral role within “Hopscotch Race.” Multiple small sound speakers placed inconspicuously within the Tjaden Hall entrance inject noises of leaping and landing foot steps into the space from various directions. Similar to the multiple viewing environments available to the viewer, multiple sound sources aim to disorient, challenge, and invite viewers to seek out the unusual location of the installation within the building. Recorded foot steps, stomping sounds, and shoe scuffing unites Crombie’s argument with the possibility that games maintain a deceptive quality when practiced. Changing tempo of the foot steps, volume (some footsteps soft, and some loud) creating crescendo and decrescendo, and moments of silence organize and provide structure to the sound’s composition. High and low pitched steps, recorded steps that are slowed down or sped up further abstract the sound’s composition giving it an unrecognizable quality. Emphasizing the playful, unpredictable, contemporary tone of the game, abstracted sound divorces Hopscotch from its previously practical applications in antiquity, and engages a viewer’s auditory receptors. Scuffing foot steps might trick the viewer into thinking there other people entering the space from the adjacent stairwell or open hallways.
Finally, film content and editing strengthen and resolve both the visual and auditory effects of the installation. Scenes of "Hopscotch" shot from various perspectives of students leaping across Ho Plaza fade in and fade out, filling the whole screen. The entire canvas is only further interrupted by a subtle lone shadowy figure playing the children's version of hopscotch, tossing a marker into the squares which overlays chaotic crowd scenes of multiple individuals playing simultaneously a unique version of the Hopscotch, our intervention. The overlay appears and disappears repeatedly accentuated by still images of foot prints which trace their way mysteriously across the picture plane, emphasizing the the screen's flat surface, relative to the two dimensional recorded scenes. Here the viewer is able to witness people voluntarily exercising out of meer curiosity and sometimes staged efforts, juxtaposed against a long history of varied functions, Hopscotch continues to be a source of both pleasure and physical benefit, the film is a testament to experimentally documenting those willing to take a leap into cherished moments from childhood and invites viewes to question how games should continue to function through the ages.