games to play with public infrastructures

Have you noticed the cables, devices, buildings and people that make up the infrastructure around you? How many of these elements feel ‘publicly’ accessible to you? What does feeling ‘connected’ mean to you, and how is this made possible? 

This game encourages you to spend time thinking about how technologies in your neighbourhood are connected, and how they connect you to others. 

Materials: Plain paper (any size) and coloured pens 

Optional: Collaging materials – such as printed photos, magazine cut-outs, stickers of objects that could represent your neighbourhood – glue, and scissors.

Steps: 

• Begin your map by drawing a simple outline of your chosen neighbourhood area. This could be where you live, work or somewhere you go for leisure, like a local park. This area can be as small as a street, or as large as a borough. 
• Then, we’ll create ‘map objects’. Draw – or write the names of – large structures, like roads, parks, well-known buildings (schools, library, hospital, markets) that give your area outline some notable points. This will fill your map with places where activities and interactions happen. You might want to illustrate the map objects with different coloured drawings, words, stickers, and printed images. 
• Reflect on your map so far. Imagine yourself in a specific place on your map and what your usual activities are. Think about and note down any devices you or people around you might use here, and then ask yourself what tasks and services these might be fulfilling. 

• Your map will show some everyday uses of technology in your neighbourhood, and how these connect you to others through various activities. 

• Also consider who might be on the receiving end of these actions. A bonus step is to consider how different devices are being supported by a wider network or system that make these activities happen – what are they and where might you connect them to on your map? You might even want to draw outside your area outline! 

This game is good for slow and relaxing craft time, and can be done alone or together. You don’t need any sewing skills – see how it feels to figure it out by doing!

Materials: a map of your neighbourhood printed, traced or drawn on a cloth of any size, any embroidery supplies you like (large eye needles and cotton embroidery floss work well). It could also be a piece of clothing, or something that needs mending or repair.

Steps: 

• Make a map of your neighbourhood on a piece of fabric you have at home: trace over from a map, draw with a fabric marker, or ask a local printer to make one for you. You can also embroider on a paper map if you like!
• Think about places that you care about in your neighbourhood. It can be your home, your garden, your favourite public place like a library or a river bank. Where are they? How do they make you feel? Embroider them onto the map in any way that expresses your feelings about them. Add any embellishments that you like.
• Finish by embroidering your names or nicknames on the piece. 

Let’s send a message through light and shadow! This game helps you create a filter for an electric or phone torch and make a small performance outside. Through fibre optic cables, data travels as light, so let’s shine a message – not with our data, but about data.

Materials: torch (or mobile phone with torch), 10cm square or circle of recycled clear and flat sheet of plastic (food container lid) or cellophane (coloured or clear), glue stick, any paper, scissors and permanent markers.

Steps:

• When you’ve finished, grab a friend or family and take yourselves out for an early evening walk with a torch and your finished filter. Make sure it’s dark enough outside and shine your torch through the filter. Bonus points for shining your light filter along the ground where you imagine a fibre optic cable might run underneath!

• When a digital message is sent, data travels as light through fibre optic cables (usually underground), it moves incredibly fast and carries a lot of information at once to the receiver.

• How about we slow down and reduce our own data flow? Let’s take our message on a gentle stroll, mimic the light with a torch, and send some data along the cables with an image or just a few words!

• Take your clear recycled plastic/cellophane sheet and use a marker pen to draw your slogan and / or picture that makes up your message.

• Stuck on a message? Consider the messages you often send online and through apps, what kinds of data about you also get delivered (your details, preferences, actions)? You might even want to make your message an instruction to the technology to protect your data. 

• Sometimes the pen might not block out all of the light, so use paper to collage any words or drawings you want to appear as complete shadows: draw them on paper, then cut and glue them onto the sheet.

• The filter won’t show your detailed drawings, so remember to draw all your elements clearly as blocked out shapes.
• You can test it out as you work on your filter, simply shine a torch through it in a dark space (or under a jacket!)

Do you know how the Internet travels in your neighbourhood? Or how it arrives at your house? Using a list of clues, this game will take you on a walk alongside the underground internet infrastructure, trying to figure out where the fibre optic cables are located. Play with your parents!

Materials: nice weather, a photo camera, access to internet (to do some research)

Steps: 

• Additional difficulty: figure out what company provides your internet (or the internet in the place you are interested in). You can ask your parents to help with this, or you can research online. The cables might run through the buildings they own!

• The information that you access on the Internet (be it a website or an online game) is stored on a physical server somewhere.

• The information travels across a network of cables which send information as flashes of light (that’s why these cables are called fiber-optic – they are made of glass).

• The cables are laid underground all over the world, even under the bottom of the ocean – this is how you can access a server physically located in a different country.

• The cables that connect the router in your house travel outside, on the street, and are usually connected to a little cabinet.

• When you walk outside, try to notice these utility cabinets. Take a picture of the one you think might house your cables.

• The cables usually run underground alongside big streets, railways and motorways (when outside of the city). Take a picture of where you think the cable might be hiding!