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Playing in the Pursuit of Reflexivity
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- Author / Creator
- Stielow, Malcolm Nicholas
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Pillow forts, rivers, shorelines, safety pins, anchor points, bathtubs, toilet paper, baking, Zelda, board games, tattoos, vast seas, marbles, plates,
This thesis is collection of reflections, teachings, learnings and personal creative outputs presented across an introduction and three separate, yet thematically connected, papers revolving around the central theme of personal applied reflexivity in practice that posits play, ambiguity and frivolity as significant for practitioners and makers of design and craft.
The words herein are probably best read like both a story and a poem; and it can be read in sequence or non-linearily, it is a gathering of joy, grief, passion, sadness, and an enduring sense of frivolousness, told as the sum of its three parts. Pillow Forts: Teaching Design Through Play and Making is a romp into the cozy centre of design education and theory through a material culture lens which proposes an introductory assignment for spatially oriented design fields. Before You Go: Ambiguous Play as a Reflexive Catalyst is a closer examination of the way that games and objects influence biases and proposes a game that illustrates how a reflexivity affects the things that people prioritize, and what they are willing to leave behind. Applied Reflexivity: Making Objects as Personal Reflexivity for Practice makes a case for the use of objects in reflexive practice, and proposes a personal, functional methodology for reflexivity that could benefit many fields that have material objects as their enduring product.
The methodology of this thesis is interdisciplinary and spans the fields of human ecology, material culture, design studies and studies on craft practices. The methods used are self-reflective, reflexive, and predominantly autoethnographic where reflection-in-action is used along the way. The themes explored are linked to creative embodied practices of making, various practices of teaching and learning, and notions around how humans play. While the three papers that make up this thesis provide the structure, this playful poetic thing would not tell the whole story if it didn’t gather all the pieces. This thesis is not a single study, it is not an answer, and it may not even be a good question. It came from uncertainty and ambiguities and represents great change and a kind of rebellion. -
- Graduation date
- Fall 2023
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- Type of Item
- Thesis
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- Degree
- Master of Arts
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- License
- This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.