From Play to Art—From Experience to Insight

Abstract

This article investigates the role of play and playlike activities (imagination, art) in developing and using symbolic tools. We understand processes of development of symbolic tools as coordination between two types of relationships: the subject–object relationships and the subject–subject relationships. This coordination begins when a new, playlike frame of activity is introduced in the interaction. The imaginary frame of activity changes relationships between the participants. Furthermore, the imaginary activity frame may enter into interaction with the out-of-play activity frames (“reality” frames). Structures and relationships built within the imaginary frames are then used to shape the actual understanding of the world (subject–object relationship) as well as the interpersonal relationships and identities of the participants.

Introduction and further development of imaginary frames is a recursive process that takes place on different but related time scales: from microdevelopment through ontogenetic development to cultural development. Our project was designed to demonstrate some of the key moments that occur in the symbolic construction, in an “untangled” manner. To that effect, we designed a drama workshop to outline and illustrate processes that take place at the point of introduction of a new, imaginary frame and at the point when this imaginary frame begins to interact with the out-of-play frames. The aim of the workshop was to magnify each stage in construction of semiotic tools by “walking” professional researchers through a series of playlike activities.

Notes

¹We use the capitals because it is a technical term specifically defined in Marjanovic-Shane's dynamic theory of metaphor. The definition is provided later in this article.

²The workshop was held at several professional conferences at Moscow, 2003; Belgrade, 2004; Philadelphia, 2004; and Sevilla, 2005.

³Free play of children in which they take different roles and explore various imagined scenarios is sometimes called “pretend” play, sometimes “symbolic,” and sometimes “dramatic” play. These differences, which reflect authors' interests and orientations, are out of the scope of this article.

⁴Known examples of play and playlike situations come from observations of the activities with infants in various Western societies. This may not be true for other cultures and societies, but there are no systematic studies of the type of activities that we call “playlike” in this study.

⁵It is interesting that in the Russian language the verb to saw can be and is often used as an idiomatic conventional expression with the same meaning as was here “invented” by the children: “to talk stupidly and without substance.” In Serbo-Croatian, “to saw” is most often used in its “literal” meaning of cutting wood. I never heard it used like in this episode (E. Matusov, personal communication, April 2007).

⁶ Capra (1996) presented “dissipative structures” through the work of Ilya Prigogine as self organizing systems far from equilibrium. A dissipative structure is a form of self-organization in which “the system has to act as a whole, producing a high degree of order through the coherent activity. … This coherent behavior emerges spontaneously at critical points of instability far from equilibrium” (pp. 86, 88).

⁷ Bakhtin's (1994) notion of a chronotope unites space, time, and their valorization—in other words, a chronotope is not merely a neutral, empty, and uniform point in the continuum of space–time. On the contrary, it is a meaningful unity in which social and individual values and relationships reign supremely. For instance, “[temporal categories] are not merely temporal categories but valorized temporal categories. [In the epic world] … in the past, everything is good: all the really good things (i.e., the ‘first’ things) occur only in the past” (Bakhtin, 1994, p. 182).

⁸This workshop was first created for a presentation at the Conference on Creativity and Imagination in Education and Methods of Mastery Moscow, November 2003. It was then developed and used in the special workshop at the Seminar for Educators in the opening of the Cultural Educational Center “ZMAJ” in New York, May 2004; at the BITEF Polyphony Festival/Conference, Belgrade, September 2004; and at the First Congress of ISCAR, Seville, 2005.

⁹We are using the term stage both to mean a “stage in development,” a level, or a degree and in its theatrical use as an “arena” or a “set.” We do this because at this point we are aware that individuals and groups can move between the stages of the development of a TOPIC in many directions and not only in one way; however, each movement builds on the TOPIC, and so it does develop and grow.

¹⁰In Seville, where the participants were of multiple nationalities, we had the scene in several languages: English, Russian, Spanish, and Serbian. This produced another interesting twist in the play.