What we’re about
Note: https://sites.google.com/view/calvinballvariations/home I made a website where I put up and continue to tweak a whole little resource packet and on how to play and games, as well as some explanations and musings. Rethinking the project a little. Anyway...
Running is boring. Let's make it strange and meditative, playful and artistic.
Each day and collection of folk will be different. Some may want to write more, some more into harder running, some might be happier with playful games, some might simply be interested in exploring the trails of the park, some may be actors and looking to pay with improv, some might be more spiritual and engaging in the meditations, some might just be silly and have intuitions about how to make Calvinball rules. I have ideas and situations that I'll run you through, but am happy to be run in turn.
In the end, it's just experiments in art, exercise, and play. Play games while jogging, sprinting, strolling, and exploring some of the hidden trails of Prospect Park. You don't actually have to run, I think most of the things can be done at a brisque stride, but running should enhance some of the meditations.
Moving the meeting place to the Peninsula, which is opposite the water from LeFrak center, basically past Smorgasburg, and moving the meeting time to 11. I'll have a squid kite in the air if it's windy, and will try to leave other bits of yarn and balloons as markers.
The main inspiration and analog is Calvinball, where the game is to make up games and layer them within each other. Other game inspirations:
- Monty Python's Silly Walks, done athletically and in various iterations of follow the leader;
- surrealist poetry games, or "the Exquisite Corpse" (see pages 24-30 of the link) with intervals of running and writing/painting/collage;
- improv games with a bit of extra physicality;
- the New Games Foundation (some hippies from the 1970s who ultimately made kid's recess a lot better);
- army running cadences, which are actually pretty fun, though I don't expect many takers;
- DIY escape rooms modified into obstacle courses and art games.
- Been thinking more deeply about the philosophy of game itself, taking more and deeper inspiration from this book Games: Agency As Art
You don't have to be a serious runner. Just be able to jog and sprint a little.
You don't have to be a poet or artist. Just be open to writing or painting a little when you're not sprinting.
You don't have to be an actor. Just be open to a little faux performing.
Also, it seems to be dog friendly (friends brought theirs and it worked fine.)
