Roll Play
Project Team: Vincent Calabro, Katie Stranix, JohnTaylor Bachman, Lane Rick, and Can Vu Bui
Roll
Play is a flexible and non-prescriptive means of navigating our
collective and personal relationships with spectacle, participation, and
the environment.
Through an ensemble of rolling ‘Wobblers’, the Ragdale Ring is
transformed into a space of exploration, play, and imagination. The
design of the Wobblers accentuates their mobility while preserving their
flexibility of use and deployment. These themes of mobility and
flexibility are key to the project goals.
Through Roll Play, we encourage visitors, performers,
participants—remote and in-person—to physically engage with their
environment, and to relish the play and discovery that emerges. Each
Wobbler, therefore, presents itself as an inviting object of
indeterminate use. Only through interaction can you truly explore its
function. Perhaps you sit on it and rock back and forth, or crawl under
it, and peer out from its rounded leaves. Or you might want to push it,
to watch the object tumble across the grass. By rolling a few Wobblers
together, it is possible to create an impromptu landscape or enclosure
of colors and planes. Perhaps you lay back on one of the resting
Wobblers and watch the wind blow through the leaves above. Whatever you
come up with, there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to play with the
Wobblers. They operate at a variety of scales, and fit into any number
of spaces across Ragdale. The possibilities are open-ended and varied,
both with regards to siting and function.
Roll Play establishes the space of experimentation. The installation
itself is not the end goal, but the means through which we collectively
meet our goal—an extended state of play and exploration.