1
The frame
Two young men stand in a small laneway, peering through a display window at caged birds. The one on the right lights up a cigarette, turning to survey nondescript wording on two plain white columns straddling the pet shop entrance. Peering from behind sunglasses â despite the weather being overcast â the smoker tucks a matchbox into the right breast pocket of his suede jacket as he focuses on reading the signsâ text out aloud verbatim. Brandishing a gun-like raised left hand, he starts to play a game, his gaze alternating between each column as he hesitantly reshuffles select words into nonsense prose. With each new recombination, his confidence increases until, soon enough, he is gesturing emphatically, swinging his arms around and stamping his feet. Finally, grinning, laughing and swinging his body, he almost shouts out his (now fluid) improvisation, finishing off with a triumphant, mock âleft hookâ.
This example, featured in Martin Scorseseâs film No Direction Home: Bob Dylan, Part 2 (2005), reveals a young Bob Dylan playfully manipulating a mundane aspect of his immediate surroundings as might a bored child. This he does to provide stimulation lacking in his direct environment, as evidenced by his behaviour: his spontaneous, emphatic movements; the tone of his voice; his smile and laughter; his manifest joy. Dylanâs wordplay here â using limited, arbitrary material â provides valuable insight into the workings of his creative process at the time (mid-1960s). It is evidence that, had it been gathered in a more auspicious setting, might easily have been drowned out by the noise of extraneous detail.
Watching the clip, it is easy to imagine how Dylan might have approached shaping a lyric like âTombstone Bluesâ (1965e) some months earlier, invoking legendary figures from the biblical to the Jazz Age: only to then wring them through some sort of sardonic, blues kaleidoscope. Moreover, there is no reason why such spontaneous (combinatorial) play might not be applied to any musical or technological facet of record production imaginable. Indeed, self-confessed playful practitioners like Brian Eno and 10ccâs Godley and Creme have applied similar principles to any number of music-making scenarios, ranging from lifting the mood of group recording sessions to the disruption of predictable patterns inherent in music-technology design and clichĂ©d popular-music tropes.
Play as a frame of mind
Play scholar Brian Sutton-Smith states that âto âplay with somethingâ means conceptually to frame it in another wayâ (1979: 305). The playful reframing of experience is an âact of reversal, an exercise in autonomyâ (1979: 316) in which activity itself becomes a reward in its own right. It also challenges the usual contingencies of power, logically negating (or rather suspending) the usual framing classes and relations, allowing the expression of feelings and ideas that everyday frames might otherwise inhibit. Sutton-Smithâs ideas regarding play and reframing experience arose as an attempt to reconcile collective and individualistic understandings of play. Whether or not play occurs in a solitary or group context, he argues, it can be best understood as a performance: a quadralogue. That is, a communicational frame between a real or imagined (i) director(s) and (ii) spectator(s) is first set up, within which dramatic content (i.e. âthe manipulation of excitement arousal through contrastive elementsâ (1979: 300â1)) is supplied by actual or imagined (iii) actor(s) and (iv) co-actor(s). Although characteristics of the playframe must first be negotiated before any dramatic content can occur, it should be emphasized that both are intrinsic to play, with players oscillating in and out of the contrastive action and subsequent renegotiations of the terms of the frame.
The playful frame of mind has been linked by seminal studies to instances of improved creativity (notable examples include: Amabile 1996; Getzels and Csikszentmihalyi 1976; Getzels and Jackson 1962; Lieberman 1965, 1977; Tegano 1990; Torrance 1961; Truhon 1983; Wallach and Kogan 1965). It is described as a psychological âworld apartâ wherein action is intrinsically motivated and an end-in-itself. Within such a zone, the concerns of the real world and oneâs usual mundane values are somewhat distanced. Sutton-Smith goes on to note that in play, frames ânot grounded in the usual material of natural and social lifeâ (1979: 317) still possess a coherent logic of their own and depend upon rules that are totally binding, albeit only temporarily so. Avner Ziv describes such frames as possessing a âlocal logicâ:
Creative people have the ability to look beyond the obvious, to see relationships in unusual and new ways, and to be open and flexible. They are not prisoners of habitual ways of thinking. They can use novel approaches, and âlocal logicâ is quite acceptable to them in the appropriate frame of reference. Therefore, their intellectual processes are open to humor. (1984: 134)
Sutton-Smithâs concept of playframing has many possible applications within the sphere of creative practice in the arts. In this context, playframes can be defined as explicitly negotiated, proscriptive-in-origin frames, in which a playful (i.e. present-moment-orientated) attitude is encouraged within their temporary boundaries. The accompanying benefits for practitioners are cognitive, conative (motivational), affective (emotional) and social. In terms of cognition, play encourages divergent thinking so that logical alternatives are generated, even though doing so may not be strictly necessary (1979). Adopting a playful frame of mind results in a present-moment orientation (Apter 1982) whereby the motivation for instigating and sustaining creative action arises from genuine interest rather than external pressures or rewards (Amabile 1983). Physicist and Nobel Laureate Richard P. Feynman once commented that his best work stemmed unwittingly from playing with ideas without consideration for how they might find practical application: a process he desc ribed as effortless (Feynman, Leighton and Hutchings 1985).
While the affective quality of play is not exclusively positive, playfulness â an observable behaviour that may be present in instances of play â facilitates âpsychological distancingâ (Hutt 1971; Lieberman 1977) and tolerance of ambiguity (Tegano 1990). Many highly creative individuals have acknowledged the importance of the playful frame of mind and cognitive spontaneity in their own work. Albert Einstein famously described his creative process as one of combinatorial play (Hadamard 1945). Arthur Koestler, similarly, likened creativity to an act of playful recombinations when he observed, âThe creative act is not an act of creation in the sense of the Old Testament. It does not create something out of nothing; it uncovers, selects, re-shuffles, combines, synthesizes already existing facts, ideas, faculties, skills. The more familiar the parts the more striking the new wholeâ (1964: 120). In a longitudinal study of artist students, Getzels and Csikszentmihalyi (1976) asked students to choose from a set of objects and to make a still life drawing of those elements chosen. The students who showed a more playful orientation towards the task, who started out with a less concrete idea of what to do, allowing the composition to emerge from their toying with the various compositional elements, and who were willing to change direction or alter the work as it progressed were independently judged as producing work that was more novel and aesthetically pleasing.
Play empowers practitioners by offering the means by which they might challenge the status quo of their respective sociocultural milieu. As Sophie Alcock asserts, âThe potentially subversive nature of both humour and playfulness invites their use as strategies for resistanceâ (2006: 23). It can also help practitioners exert greater influence within their peer group. Simon Zagorski-Thomas, in his book The Musicology of Record Production (2014: 161), cites Goffmanâs work on âdramaturgyâ as a useful framework for interpreting how team members might more effectively âplay alongâ with each other. Even in a solo context, play can be used to reframe situations in a manner that encourages the challenging of assumptions and limiting the noise of non-task-relevant information. Playframe negotiations can even be said to take place between humans and machines or instruments since â as Zagorski-Thomas (2014) and Zak (2010a) both point out â technological devices must be considered active partners in modern creative process, influencing how practitioners go about their work, and empowering and constraining action in equal measure.
Playframing by adults in a creative-practice context also promotes creative-risk taking and spontaneity, makes the delegation of roles and tasks a more transparent, less adversarial process and (where possible) matches current skill level to challenge so as to promote optimal experience. As will be demonstrated in Chapters 4 and 5, such playframes can take on the form of simple terms of engagement; constitute procedural, physical or software systems; or, be expressed as temporal or spatial zones, each with their own unique sets of totally binding rules, limitations and phenomenological flavour.
Opening the floodgates: Duchampâs âFountainâ
Play is not the only form of expressive behaviour that relies upon novel frame making as a âfundamentally creative response to lifeâ (Sutton-Smith 1979: 319). The reframing of experience is also a key feature of art. Musician Frank Zappa has the following to say:
The most important thing in art is The Frame. For painting: literally; for other arts: figuratively â because, without this humble appliance, you canât know where The Art stops and The Real World begins. . . . Anything can be music, but it doesnât become music until someone wills it to be music, and the audience listening to it decides to perceive it as music. (1997: 196, bold emphasis in original)
The frame that art offers applies equally well to both product and process. In the latter case, it can be understood as a protective one. Just as in play, art provides a psychological buffer from the consequences of oneâs actions and, in doing so, encourages cognitive flexibility and risk tasking. Music producer Brian Eno once reflected, ââArt is a netâ, . . . âArt is safeâ. . . . Youâre creating a false world where you can afford to make mistakesâ (Tamm 1995: 21).
Play is not just about frame making; however, it is just as much about frame breaking (Sutton-Smith 1979). It is now just a hair over 100 years since Marcel Duchampâs infamous piss-take on the art establishment the âreadymadeâ sculpture âFountainâ (1917/1964) was first exhibited: in a manner. This seminal, playful work was a simple, but radical, reframing of an everyday object (a menâs porcelain urinal), reorientated on its side and elevated on a pedestal for consideration, if not reverence. As modern-art champion and photographer Alfred Stieglitz pointed out at the time, when viewed through eyes detached from notions of functionality or the Western art canon, it could be interpreted as a most aesthetically pleasing object. Not everybody in the modern-art world of the time agreed, however. Rather than contravene their charter by rejecting the work outright, the exhibition organizers who received it simply hid it behind a partition and hoped the problem would go away. Needless to say, it didnât. If anything, Duchampâs audacious offering not only challenged contemporary conceptions of what constitutes art, but it opened the floodgates (pardon the pun) for Surrealism, Pop art, Fluxus and Conceptual art: movements that took on the old art establishment with a sense of humour.
If âFountainâ can be considered the Big Bang of twentieth-century art, then several aftershocks are also worthy of mention. While not as iconoclastic â if only by virtue of their chronology â three works from the fields of painting, music and dance/theatre (letâs call it kabarett) share with âFountainâ the notion that a work of art or performance need only provide a physical or conceptual frame, with the content left to someone (or something) else. Robert Rauschenbergâs âWhite Paintingâ (1951), John Cageâs â4â33ââ (1952) and Valeska Gertâs âPauseâ (c. 1920s) each present frames ranging from the physical to the temporal and corporeal. âWhite Paintingâ is a collection of canvases painted white, with each of the five (single and multiple-panel) works designed as âreceptive surfacesâ. It was a concept not lost on composer John Cage, who described the paintings as âairports for lights, shadows and particlesâ (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art 2020). In fact, so impressed was Cage that, soon after, he published â4â33ââ, a three-movement composition with a score directing the performer(s) to simply sit silently at their instrument(s) for its duration. âPauseâ, which pre-dates both works by some thirty years, involved Gert striking a pose, arms stretched overhead, and holding it, motionless. Performed as an entr'acte in front of Berlin cinema-goers while the movie reels were changed, it was a shocking display even for those accustomed to Gertâs lively âgrotesque burlesquesâ that lampooned bourgeois society and celebrated âthe ones who fell through the cracksâ through dance and mimicry (Gert 1931). Also a film actor of note, Gert later influenced punk rockers such as Nina Hagen in the 1970s. And yet, her work today remains relatively obscure, at least when compared to Rauschenberg and Cageâs oft-celebrated efforts. This may be due to her having been a woman (Goldwyn 2011). It may also stem from the fact that her performances occurred outside of a high-art context. Whatever the reason, she is deserving of greater recognition than she has thus far received for her contribution to the arts.
No discrimination, no information
Many of the mechanisms informing the playful reframing of experience can be explained using phenomenological interpretations of adult play, such as those proffered by Csikszentmihalyi (1979) and Apter (1991). Csikszentmihalyi explains: âSince what we experience is reality, as far as we are concerned, we can transform reality to the extent that we influence what happens in consciousness and thus free ourselves from the threats and blandishments of the outside worldâ (1990: 20). This insight echoes Guilfordsâ assertion, âNo discrimination, no informationâ (1975: 38). The ability to momentarily filter out the noise of information not congruent with immediate goals optimizes efficiency of mental effort. At best, a pleasurable state of mind emerges f...