The Innovation-Friendly Organization by Anna Simpson

Author:Anna Simpson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK, London

Places to Play

If the spaces we frequent day to day affect how we think about our role in life and how we interact with other people, do some allow us to be more open-minded than others? What sort of place stimulates our curiosity? In March 2016, I had three extraordinary encounters in Singapore—one with a child, one with an artist, one with a young entrepreneur—each of which offered me the same answer.

First, imagine a gallery filled with giant illuminated balls, which change colour as you kick them and roll them into each other; a hopscotch you design yourself by dragging shapes into rows on a touch screen—then hop down, each shape now a rock in a Japanese pool, with frogs croaking as you step on them, water splashing if you fall in, and cranes swooping majestically overhead on a parallel interactive screen. Colour in a fish or turtle, and send it swimming across a giant aquarium on the wall: when you scan it, it immediately comes to life as an animated creature and sets off for adventure in the coral reefs. Then wander through a forest of lights, the stars shooting around you in response to your moves.

This was the Future World exhibition at the ArtScience Museum, featuring the work of teamLab—a renowned Japanese group of ultra-technologists. Gasp-inducing at the time, it could all sound commonplace by the time you read this. But I suspect the impact of such interactive design on the behaviour of people of all ages (the crowd easily spanned 65 years) will outlast the novelty. We were all just playing. ‘What happens if I…?’ were the words on everyone’s lips. We experienced the thrill of giving it a go, not knowing, giving yourself up to surprise, and the enchantment and gratification of seeing your own moves and the things you make take on instant life and come back to play with you.

But the most transformative space was arguably outside the ArtScience Museum, and free to all. ArtScience is shaped like a lotus, or an uplifted hand, with lily ponds around it. During the Future World exhibition an animation was projected onto its petals or fingers. I wandered out to look up at it, and met an eight-year-old girl playing on her mobile phone. She had an app featuring characters by a Japanese calligraphy artist, and when she selected one and swiped up (skywards), off flew the character she had chosen, and up on that huge facade—for all to see—flew a butterfly. Another sign she selected caused the sound of thunder to crack over the bay.

For me, this encapsulates the transformative potential of play. In that little girl’s hands was the power to influence not just her own imaginary world, but a world everyone else experiences too. In her mind, from that instant, was the realization that her own dreams and actions can transform a greater reality. Combine that with the connectedness and creativity of the next generation—with the whole movement of citizen innovation—and the potential to translate collective dreams into reality dawns.

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