Playful Aggression

Tania Ostorga, MFA ’11

thesis abstract

My thesis explores the tension and boundaries between playfulness and aggression through a series of multi-sensory objects and games. The games intentionally focus on the quantity of challenges and rewards given to players throughout the experience. Each system is designed so players can create their own defense and attack techniques — they even have the option to team up to defeat their opponents. Can I seduce them into playing the game? If so, how?

A series of discoveries made while researching my thesis led me to closely examine the threshold between playfulness and aggression and begin using my games as observational tools. Studying users as they reacted to each prototype led me to a few questions central to my work:

What behaviors are tolerable and intolerable to our society?

Can I develop a testing mechanism that makes these behaviors tolerable?

Where can these emotions and behaviors be expressed freely? Can aggressive impulses become acceptable?

While my games do not test and explore emotional extremes, they do examine the tension between playfulness and aggression, tolerance for discomfort and embarrassment, and release and gratification.

Coming to know our own aggressive impulses may help us tolerate and accept each other. I want to provide an inner perspective of aggressive impulses, what they are, what stimulates them, and how and where can we express them.