JP

At Bakken & Bæck’s “An Interesting Day” conference, an event that promised tech and design imagination with a dash of weirdness, PLAY was the boundless theme of the (most interesting) day. Open to close, this day’s presenters brought us on the journeys of their projects and careers, from feeling restricted by convention to crafting innovative ideas for changing how we interact with digitality.

I was struck by these speakers’ recurring implications of the impossibility of play within the wrong space: Creativity flourishes within the safety of its structure, but when that structure is built from blocks that certain people are unable to stand on, or if that structure is unsafe, then basic needs take precedence over playfulness and creativity is smothered. Through their endeavors and histories, the individuals who marked An Interesting Day have sought to build new spaces that allow themselves and others the security of respect, and thus the right to partake in play.

In reverse order, because I want to end on the feminist note (#typical) and rules are made to be broken:

Zach Lieberman, artist and experimental hacker, spared the crowd a sermon on his distaste for traditional education, but the point was noted and, indeed, represents the foundation of his journey. From opening a new kind of school, the School for Poetic Computation, Lieberman founded a space of new computering for students and, for himself, found a place to become inspired by students for his own work-play with the concept of space, itself. Lieberman’s greatest advice was to iterate with play over and over again, and within that repetition arises individuality and the ability to understand how oneself is in or out of synch with the world.

Elise By Olsen and Morteza Vaseghi have proven that space for youth and space for adults do not exist in separate spheres. With their many-year age difference, teenage Olsen and 20-something Vaseghi combined into the editor and art director duo of Recens Paper, a youth publication that pushed the 13-year-old perspective of Olsen and the refined artistry of Vaseghi into a world of collaborative play. With Olsen’s transition into legal adulthood, their partnership has moved more toward the mature with Wallet. From turning their works upside down (literally) to redefining media advertising, the pair have found a space for innovation within their partnership and the pages they together create.

From Joy Mutai’s opening words of “I think my presentation is going to be boring,” her talk was anything but. This UN Habitat consultant works with Block By Block, an initiative that uses Minecraft and mixed reality to help community members map their hopes for the public spaces in their cities. Mutai’s speech provided a refreshing reminder that public spaces, the places where communities converge to innovate and build culture together, are being swiftly wiped off the map in favor of privatization. There are dangerous consequences for the loss of these spaces. She piqued another important notion: that many public spaces are unsafe, especially for women, children, and the differently abled. The privilege of having safe public spaces, even just streetlamps to light the walk home, is not one to take lightly.

Graphic designer Tracy Ma, whose slides bounced merrily from one of mocking an old white man to the next of mocking herself, evidenced her own style of play within the presentation’s visual bounds. Playfulness needs tension in order to make a point, she explained, so Ma’s space for play is within the structures of society itself (or, Xanadu), and she daily aims to highlight the absurdities within the status quo. Ma’s philosophy seems to be fearlessness, and her ability to push the limits of her playspace performed a deed for us all to profit from: greater bounds of acceptable space to poke holes in the seriousness of everyday mundanity.

I was most anxious to hear from Ida Tin, motorcyclist and CEO of Clue, the menstrual tracking app and women’s health haven that I have used for the last year or so. Tin brought us through her history as a motorcycle rider from age 1 through her time running a company while traversing a desert; it seemed that Ida Tin was not restricted by any space of her own – that is, until her own body threatened the bounds of an unwanted pregnancy. From that point, Tin blew through the existing space of modern science and the discontinuity between business and compassion to build an area for women to understand themselves while contributing to the largest dataset on women’s health in the world. Tin has also redefined management, carving space from her busy schedule to focus on herself and the responsibility she holds as the leader of this women’s place.

Last, but technically first, Anna Holmes. Five minutes into Holmes’ speech had me engulfed in goosebumps; I could have left then and still captioned this post as “The Most Interesting Day.” Holmes has built her own spaces, both Jezebel and Topic, from frustration (a feeling I know quite well but haven’t yet professionally harnessed). When her older female colleague silenced her ideas for progress in media, she built a space to redefine women’s representation. When popular platforms evolved visual media into vapidity, Holmes constructed a new space to ask people to care. Despite her anger grown from society’s egregious lack of love for some of its members, Holmes has infused art and humor into her endeavors, achieving my dream of making the world better while instilling it with creative beauty.

Seven speakers: 5 women, 2 men, all who prioritized compassion, community, and collaboration, and all who pushed innovation beyond the 20th-century norm of privilege-for-privileged. Of course, I heard a few very quiet quips from a couple of white male conference attendees about the activist nature of the Holmes and Tin’s speeches (though, thankfully, merely a few and not at all loud). It may be unsettling to hear people speak passionately about dismantling the current structures of the world you feel included in. My reply is this: If you are a white man, and you are concerned about the representation of your demographic in tech and innovation, then I encourage you to read a history book, walk around a city to enjoy the street names and statues, and, frankly, find a new passion that is not ‘innovation.’ Innovation isn’t just creating new machines, algorithms, and processes, nor is its sole purpose to build efficiency for profit; rather, innovation is the reimagining, forward-shoving, general upside-downing of every possibility in the world. The possibility to express care and responsibility for the privacy of each of 10 million clients, or make people laugh about a new idea, or as we found at An Interesting Day, the possibility to build new spaces in pursuit of full inclusion.

After some exasperating months of sniggers and snipes from some less-than-progressive male colleagues, who alternatively wink hello at me (1 office. 1 day. 10 winks.) and offer fascinating advice such as, “women can’t reproduce information,” I entered An Interesting Day hoping only to get a sliver of progressive professional hope. Bakken & Bæck’s team did not disappoint, and I now renew my search for such a playspace with the vigor that it and I deserve. For me, An Interesting Day was the feeling of being heard. For me, that was the space of play that sparked my creativity. I’ve renewed my hopes of finding (or someday myself building) a space where my creativity can thrive and my play can emerge, so that I can join this group to push the limits of technology, creativity, communication, and society. Let’s go play.