Francis Alÿs’s Children’s Games is a series of fourteen videos, started in 1999 and filmed all over the world, still in process. Alÿs explores the universes of children’s games, using a child’s point of view to explain and reinterpret the world. It doesn’t matter which culture or generation it belongs to: children’s games are strikingly similar all over the world. The apparent innocent, unpretentious nature of a children's game allows the artist to reveal deeper issues or thoughts. It allows him to express, in an often poetic way, how from heaviness lightness can arise. We are going to show first how Reel – Unreel is not the only deliberate utilisation by Alÿs of a child point of view to convey deeper meanings, and then we’ll interest ourselves more specifically into the violence and the poetic aspect in the work disclosed through childhood.
II. Relation with other works
Even in the artist’s works that don’t belong to the Children’s Game series, we can find this idea of an inventive and playful approach to the world, often, accidentally or not, poetic. In Paradox of Praxis I (Something doing something leads to nothing) (Mexico City, 1997), the artist itself ends up taking the place of a child. What was at the beginning a tedious work, pushing a big block of ice in the city’s streets, becomes a play when nine hours after the ice has melt enough to be pushed with the feet like a ball and picked up. His apparently insignificant game serves as a pretext for a social satire. Besides, and perhaps it feels quite natural, the very end of Paradox of Praxis I features Mexico City children – maybe an early hint of Children’s Games –, focused on inspecting the water puddle formed by the melted ice, and conversing with the camera, as to remi...
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... reels were burned by the Talibans in 2001, as they thought they were originals.
IV. Conclusion
Talking about his paintings that were presented with Reel – Unreel in David Zwirner gallery in New York, Alÿs said “I cannot paint violence”. Maybe this could explain why he chose to “paint” in his film not the latent idea of violence or cruelty that is promised by the war, far away in the background, or simply to evoke it with a few brushstrokes, but simply the playful, joyful and poetic aspect of a game, even though it happens to allow him to convey much deeper meanings and even denunciations. Beyond any religious, cultural or historical point of view, Reel – Unreel allows us to have an afresh and new vision of the world. This is possible only by becoming again a child, following the boys in their frantic race, playing with them for the sole and pure joy of playing.
It is an animated documentary film released in 2011 that displays the harsh reality of the Colombian youth narrated by children themselves (ages 8-13). The directors use only interviews and drawings produced by children that have suffered by the violence of the armed conflict. The end result is an innovative animation movie that allows to look at the Colombian current reality from a child`s point of view: full of innocence and sweetness, not ready for the violence that surrounds them.
The subjects were observed to climb on structures and furthermore jumped from the different heights. Through the interviews Sandseter gathered that the children where frightened by climbing high and jumping down to the ground but was more exciting than going down the intended way. The second category is play with high speed, and this was commonly observed when children rode their bikes at high speeds or ran down hills. The risk comes from running into something or someone. The children describe the play with high speeds as scary, but continued to push the risk, as they would start to slide head first down the hill. Play with dangerous tools is the third category, as the children where aloud to work with knives and hammers. The children did not see this as risky play as they felt competent with the dangerous tools; the staff when interviewed suggested this as risky play, when the children would use the knives to whittle sticks. The fourth category of risky play is play near dangerous elements such as the ocean, cliffs and the fire pit in the preschools. Again the children did not see this as risky play but the staff saw children playing by the ocean and the fire pit was risky, as they feared the children falling in. Rough and tumble play is another category as children would play fight and wrestle. The children found expressed this as risky play as it was a scary activity but all agreed it was great fun. The last category of risky play is play where children can disappear or get lost. As the preschools where surrounded by forest the children where aloud to explore, they would not go alone because it was to scary but rather went in groups to eliminate the risk of getting lost. The six categories of risky play created by Sandseter’s study is the key factors of the
‘Some idea of a child or childhood motivates writers and determines both the form and content of what they write.’ -- Hunt The above statement is incomplete, as Hunt not only states that the writer has an idea of a child but in the concluding part, he states that the reader also has their own assumptions and perceptions of a child and childhood. Therefore, in order to consider Hunt’s statement, this essay will look at the different ideologies surrounding the concept of a child and childhood, the form and content in which writers inform the reader about their ideas of childhood concluding with what the selected set books state about childhood in particular gender. The set books used are Voices In The Park by Browne, Mortal Engines by Reeve and Little Women by Alcott to illustrate different formats, authorial craft and concepts about childhood. For clarity, the page numbers used in Voices In The Park are ordinal (1-30) starting at Voice 1.
Children are seen as adorable, fun loving, and hard to control. Ida Fink uses a child in “The Key Game” to be the key to this family’s life. The setting is placed during the start of World War II; Jews all around were being taken. Fink uses a boy who doesn’t look the traditional Jewish, “And their chubby, blue-eyed, three-year-old child” (Fink). As they read on the emotional connection is stronger because there is a face to go with this character. Fink draws a reader in by making connections to a family member the reader may know. A blue-eyed, chubby child is the picture child of America. A child in any story makes readers more attached especially if they have children of their own. The child is three way too young to be responsible for the safety of the father, yet has to be. Throughout the story, we see how the mother struggles with making her child play the game because no child should be responsible like
As a graduate of Radboud University, Isabela Granic brings to light the reasons why the youth actually benefits from playing violent video games. For example, in her article, “The Benefits of Playing Video Games,” Granic illustrates the fact that children gain social skills, highly more efficient motor skills, and the understanding of the humans as a whole. Noted by the author, “Whereas adolescents and adults often use self-disclosure and direct discussion with close friends to resolve emotional issues, children use play to work them out through pretend-based narratives enacted either alone or with others” (Granic 67). What the author means is that children use a different form of actions to get across their feelings. While both Sauer’s cause and effect approach of adolescent gaming and Granic’s physiological approach and their conclusions about the effects on children have led me to observe to a new approach to understand the complexity of the minds of the young players. However, what is the causes of violent video gaming and do they truly result in a negative or positive effect upon the
The idea of childhood innocence is one that could be interpreted in many different ways. Yusef Komunyakaa’s “English”, Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron”, Peter Tait’s “Too much information destroys childhood innocence”, and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road are all pieces that demonstrate how childhood innocence is preserved. In “English”, Komunyakaa describes a boy who sees an airstrike during a war and thinks it is a celebration because no one has ever explained the concept of war to him. “Harrison Bergeron” demonstrates a society that is very conservative about the knowledge they allow its civilians to obtain. Peter Tait’s article on preserving childhood innocence exposes the truths about social media and the easy access kids
video games often warp their sense of reality. The kids think that if they shoot a person in a game and nothing really happens then nothing will really happen if they shoot a person in real life. When video games first became popular, people may not have seen this as much of a problem because games were not very realistic. With the advancement of technology, however, video games are becoming more and more realistic. If video games become more realistic, children will forget what is real and what is simulated; a child seeing somebody violently murder another human being in a video game will have the same effects as seeing somebody murder another human being in real life. Witnessing these brutal acts of violence either will traumatize or desensitize them to violence. However, this is contradictory to the “Play is labile” theory (Schroeder 4), which will be discussed, in further detail.
The first video game arrived on the scene in the 1950’s. It began as a rather simplistic form of entertainment including games like “Tennis for Two” and “Ping Pong”. Fast forward 50 years later and current games advanced extremely beyond the basic oscilloscope. Developed animations have lifelike characteristics; some even mimic the movement of the player’s body. Video games have evolved and with evolution come many concerns about its sometimes violent and immoral contents. This presentation serves to educate whether video games have a negative effect on the behavior of youth. We will highlight both negative and positive aspects of the practice and use statistics to help you make an inform decisions when selecting games for loved ones.
Risky play is an important part of children’s play and children have shown a natural desire of outdoor risky play in the early years of ages (Brussoni, Olsen, Pike & Sleet, 2012). Risky play refers to play that allows children to feel excited and may lead to physical injury (Sandseter, 2007). In the video Adventurous play-Developing a culture of risky play, the interviewer Neville had discussed risky play with five educators. By consulting from this video, this report will provide rationales which are for creating opportunities for risky play in the child care centres, explain how to achieve the outcomes of the Early Years Learning Framework through planning for risky play. It then attempts to analyse the observational learning in Bandura’s
Children have a natural inclination to play, alongside a natural instinct to learn and to be curious and inventive, which are characteristics of the human race in general. This quote taken from Janet Moyles is a good starting point for this essay. It is well known that children love to play. If a child were to be left to his/her own devices they would happily play and create new worlds anywhere they were left. It has been well documented and researched that children learn excellently through play. However they are not always given the opportunity to do so, instead being told to, ‘finish your work and then you can go play’. Obviously this is not always the case, but the fact that it is a common practice shows that we do not all fully appreciate the importance of play to children’s learning. This essay will attempt to show how children learn through play, making reference to current theory and practice. I will also give examples from my own first-hand experience of how children learn and develop as people through play.
In the article “Why we need violent video games,” Gilsdorf draws attention to the fact that violent video games are not the reason for aggressive behavior amongst youths; rather he suggests that they are an outlet for people’s aggression (Gilsdorf, 2013). Ethan Gilsdorf started out in journalism as a Paris-based travel writer and he is the author of the travel memoir investigation Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms. He is known to be a writer, journalist and a critic (“About Ethan Gilsdorf”, n.d.). The author’s purpose in this article is to inform the readers that violent video games are not always related to the violence in reality. This is a timely argument as the article assesses the relation between violence and video games
Remove barriers: If follow these steps and reach this point in the change process, and will discuss the vision and build the support of all levels of the organization. The Organization shall review the organizational structure, job descriptions, compensation and performance systems to ensure they are in line with this vision. Create urgency for change to occur, it is useful if the whole society really wants. Develop a sense of urgency about the need for change. This can help the company Alphabet Games spark of motivation to get things moving. It will help to identify potential threats, and develop scenarios showing what could happen in the future. It also examines
The Tale of Peter Rabbit and Voices in the Park were published at either end of the twentieth century, a period which witnessed the creation of the modern picturebook for children. They are both extremely prestigious examples of picturebooks of their type, the one very traditional, the other surrealist and postmodern. The definition of ‘picturebook’ used here is Bader’s: ‘an art form [which] hinges on the interdependence of pictures and words, on the simultaneous display of two facing pages, and on the drama of the turning of the page’ (Bader, quoted in Montgomery, 2009, p. 211). In contrast with a simple illustrated book, the picturebook can use all of the technology available to it to produce an indistinguishable whole, the meaning and value of which is dependent on the interplay between all or any of these aspects. Moebius’s claim that they can ‘portray the intangible and invisible[…], ideas that escape easy definition in pictures or words’ is particularly relevant to these two works. Potter’s book is, beneath its didactic Victorian narrative, remarkably subtle and subversive in its attitudes towards childhood, and its message to its child readers. Browne’s Voices in the Park, on the other hand, dispenses with any textual narrative; by his use of the devices of postmodernism, visual intertextuality and metaphor, he creates a work of infinite interpretation, in which the active involvement of the reader is key.
Lyrics allow the listener to interpret the music in any which way they so choose, and for the majority of the time, the listener doesn’t process the lyrics effectively. Lyrics are under the most scrutiny due to explicit content, but when rapper ‘Precise’ was interviewed, he said he didn’t feel the need to kill any one, or bring harm to anyone. Video games, where are actually interactive, force the participant to do the killing, punching, or any other method of violence the game brings, which is what should raise concern to parents and media across the
In a society driven by technology, video games are becoming more popular each and everyday. People of all ages enjoy video games in their free time; these games allow the player to become an athlete, a soldier, or a professional fighter at the tip of their fingers. The biggest problem with these video games is that they are becoming too violent. In today’s society, children often brag about the new video game they bought, and the number of people they have managed to kill while playing these games. Video games have become realistic, causing them to intrigue a larger amount of children. Many of these violent video games encourage killing and fighting of enemies, or strangers in the game. Each year a new game system, and hundreds of video games are released, and millions of kids go out and buy them and spend hours playing. Video games have a large effect on school performance and time spent with family. Children would prefer to play their games than sit down and talk with their parents (Saleem, 2012).