A Bee’s Dream is a unique flower exchange, nestled within a cottage garden atmosphere that features an enchanting water garden – a delight for the honeybees! Players trade flowers to create their own colorful designs to fill in their personal garden plots. A Bee’s Dream was made with locally raised wool that gives the game play an out-of-doors feeling that connects players back to the natural world of the honeybees.
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Beatrix Farrand was a contemporary of Jens Jensen and a pioneering woman landscape architect who studied under the guidance of botanist Charles Sprague Sargent. She created her own landscape business and provided regular consulting for many distinguished institutions including the White House and Dumbarton Oaks, while innovating a nursery exchange program between universities and the Morton Arboretum, located in Lisle, Illinois. Like Gertrude Jekyll, Farrand drew inspiration from impressionist painting and additionally compared gardening to arranging music for an orchestra. She often visited clients wearing a wool suit that she was not afraid to pull weeds in.
Beatrix Potter, the inspiring British children’s author raised sheep and conserved the natural landscape in the Lake District, where she invited the Girl Guides to visit for their excursions. Potter created the garden adventure, The Game of Peter Rabbit in watercolor on paper with handwritten rules. She also illustrated numerous plants in her children’s stories, kept a gardening journal and designed her own garden plots that she maintained at Hill Top Farm in Near Sawrey. In recent years, it has been encouraged that we create our gardens with the survival of the honeybees in mind by providing water reserves and flowers they can forage to ensure that the pollination of our greater food supply harmoniously continues for future generations.
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Research for A Bee’s Dream began in 2011, and was used to create both Harvest Dreams and Noah’s Ark. A Bee’s Dream was completed in 2013, and was presented at ASLE 2015, hosted by the University of Idaho.
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With special thanks to Natasha Lehrer Lewis.
Research for my games led me into some of the most interesting and unexpected places, including water gardens, apiaries, and the prairie landscape. Inspiration from nature is interwoven into all of my games, and enriches the gameplay experience.
As a volunteer bee keeper at the Heller Nature Center in Highland Park, Illinois, I learned a lot about collaboration and cooperation from the perspective of others and from observation of the honeybees tending the hives. It was an extraordinary and inspiring experience.
The Magical Dream Weaver, 2006–09 created by Janine Fron
Initially inspired by Louise Bourgeois, this unique cooperative game set made of cashmere, mohair, muslin, organza, watercolor paper, rhinestones, and fresh water pearls explores the magic of fairy tales and women illustrators, like Jessie M. King, which later evolved into the Quills! series. © 2006-09 Janine Fron.
Quills! Elizabethan Edition I: The Heroines of Shakespeare, 2016–17 created by Janine Fron
The Quills! cooperative game series provides fans and educators with a panoramic view of women moving through the literary arts both as characters and as writers, offering players opportunities to directly engage with their writings in a playful and insightful manner. The women represented exemplify leadership skills—as pioneering writers, leading characters, and even ruling monarchs. Presented at the JASNA 2017 AGM in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the death of Jane Austen, who wrote about the queen in her juvenilia. © 2016 Janine Fron.
Jessie M. King’s cover art for How Cinderella Was Able to Go to the Ball, 1924, published by G. T. Foulis, UK. From the collection of Janine Fron.
As featured in New Media Futures: The Rise of Women in the Digital Arts.
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The Magical Dream Weaver cooperative game was played in a special fairy tale game making workshop created for the second grade at the Alcott Elementary School in Chicago. The game was also presented in a special workshop with Prairie Prose at the Cranbrook Kingswood School for Girls, and inspired future game making workshops.
Using cashmere and mohair as part of the game’s design, I observed how these tactile elements helped create a mood of play in the game that enabled younger players to share personal stories about their daily lives and sleeping patterns with each other. This led me to explore working with wool as a game element, in which I learned how to create woolen fabric with the nuno felting process used in A Bee’s Dream, Noah’s Ark and Harvest Dreams. The dynamic style of play I developed for The Magical Dream Weaver influenced the gameplay for A Bee’s Dream, Noah’s Ark, Harvest Dreams, and the Quills! Cooperative Literary Game Series. I also used the nuno felting process to create woolen fabric swatches for the unique flora fashions I created in the Prairie Fairies.
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With special thanks to Natasha Lehrer Lewis.
Players gather vintage costumes for The Fashionistas’ girlie band concert tour. In The Fashionistas gameplay, to be the first is not necessarily the best, where everyone wins in the end. Race, gender and culture are absent from the game elements, so players can project their own personae and body image into the gameplay, making it accessible and inclusive.
The Prairie Fairies Flora Fashion Cooperative Game evolved from The Fashionistas.
“How we play the game may be more important than we imagine, for it signifies nothing less than our way of being in the world.”
—George Leonard
As quoted in The New Games Book
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Selected highlights from Ludica’s collaborations, including game-design challenges, publications, and discussions. Ludica was cofounded in Los Angeles in 2005 with Celia Pearce, Jacquelyn Ford Morie, Janine Fron, and Tracy Fullerton.
With special thanks to our collaborators and friends for their enthusiasm, inspiration, and friendship: the late Bernie DeKoven, Mary Flanagan, Richard Kahlenberg, Elina Ollila, Katherine Milton, Katherine Moriwaki, Alex and Judy Singer, and Larry Tuch. We hope our work continues to playfully challenge and inspire.
Courtesy of Ludica.
As featured in New Media Futures: The Rise of Women in the Digital Arts.
Players enjoy learning about The Fashionistas band members–Kiki, Sonia, Yasmine and Celeste–who are defined more by what they love to do rather than how they look, which is absent from the game elements. This unique, inclusive style of gameplay encourages players to explore different personalities and talents over outward appearances.
The Fashionistas is the first cooperative game I created and designed in 2003-04. It is a hybrid game, digitally designed on the computer, and realized as a tactile, mixed media interactive art object, comprised of collaged papers, fabric and rhinestones.
It grew dark and, in the sky,
a wealth of stars shone out
that shone again, in starlight on the flood,
and the ark moved in a moving wheel of stars.
Rumer Godden
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Help Noah and his family gather elements for each animal to board the ark: sun, moon, stars, soil, water and hearts of love that grow their food for their journey. Bonus elements include a beehive, grapes, olive branch, acorn, flowers and a dove to quicken their boarding. Story cards reveal pieces of their experience.
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Noah’s Ark is a spiritual adventure that tests the stronghold of a family while teaching patience, forgiveness and filling in the world that is very special to bring to a growing child. Caring for animals, seed collecting, gardening, farming, architecture, and community building are all elements of the story, complete with the arc of a rainbow. Noah’s Ark is a favorite childhood story for many, young and old alike. I discovered the creative joy involved in artistically bringing Noah’s journey to life as a cooperative game experience. I had encountered Rumer Godden’s poetic In Noah’s Ark that brought a special voice to the life of the animals, connecting them with the heavens above in the constellations of the zodiac.
Rien Poortvliet’s remarkable interpretation of Noah’s Ark, his life drawings of animals in the wild were equally stunning. I wanted to create something original that was connected directly to the earth and our animals. I learned the art of dry and nuno felting–sculpturally working with locally raised organic wool. In observing the sheep at a local farm, they work so hard, grazing the pasture while taking in all of the natural elements; soaking them up for their protection, like the stars shining on their coats–which becomes the warmth in our woolen wears. In playing with a game made of wool, we come closer to our connection to the earth and the cosmos, and our role as shepherds to care for it.
During this time, I received a teaching certificate from the Chicago Waldorf School’s Arcturus Program. Waldorf Education supports a unique approach of teaching through the arts at all academic levels, with an emphasis on free play in Early Childhood. It is a dynamic model of hands-on education, steeped in a classical tradition that is highly influential in alternative eduction and homeschooling. I discovered Waldorf Education through my personal exploration, study and practice of the beautiful healing art known as Eurythmy. I L💖VE Eurythmy!
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With special thanks to Natasha Lehrer Lewis.
Wake up, wake up,
My children dear.
Spring is coming,
Spring is near!
Excited children share their own stories while waiting for the imaginative Mother Earth puppet play to begin.
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An organic play set and puppet play for 2-6 players, suggested ages 5 and up.
An assortment of felted Root Children help Mother Earth prepare for the seasons, beginning with spring. Made from locally raised organic wool.
A gourd with tree stumps and branches can be used as a moveable stage elements for their story to unfold along with other treasures found in nature.
“A bit of fragrance always clings to the hand that gives roses.”
Chinese Proverb
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And rivers pounded in the crystal,
mountains misted o'er and sea broke day,
and in your palm you held a crystal sphere
and slept upon a throne.
Arseny Tarkovsky
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A dozen roses for Rainer is a locally made cooperative game for 2-6 players, suggested ages 12+. Players create lyrical phrases from scattered rose petals and combine into poems to share aloud.
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This is the third game I designed in 2004-05 as I began exploring cooperative play. I was inspired by Adam Fuss’ book, My Ghost, which included poems by Rainer Maria Rilke and Arseny Tarkovsky. The artistic inspiration came from an exhibition I attended at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on the International Arts and Crafts Movement, which ultimately brought me back to the prairie landscape where I learned about Jens Jensen.
I wondered what it would be like for game designers to look to art history and design to renew our cultural engagement with meaningful ideals in the games we were making today. I also spoke about this at a conference in Denmark for a paper I contributed to on the New Games Movement.
In Fuss’ book, there are beautiful images Rilke created in his poem: “the loveliest thing in my invisible landscape, helping me to be seen by angels that are invisible.” These words were so lovely, I wondered what it would be like for people to play with them and what kind of interactions this would bring about. The results were amazing and profound.
In his writings, Rilke mentioned the idea of the object poem, which this game comes close to realizing with its multidimensional quality, both in its artistry and in the spirit in which it was made. It is from these creative forces at work that Prairie Prose evolved from. Prairie Prose was reviewed in Feminist Media Studies, Volume 11, Issue 2.
As featured in New Media Futures: The Rise of Women in the Digital Arts.
We were led, one knew not where.
Whole towns, built by some miracle,
parted before us like a mirage,
and about our feet lay mint,
birds flew with us on our way
and fish swam up the river
and the heavens were opened before our eyes . . .
Arseny Tarkovsky
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The idea behind this playful experience is that knowledge–literally and metaphorically–evolves from nature. There are 358 petals to play with. It is quite lovely and lyrical to watch the petals fall from the bag and scatter on the table. It is a magical moment of grace and beauty that creates an ethereal context for creating poetry, which I imagine, with the right people, would make for a most dream-like shared experience. I've long desired to conceptually create something similar to this project to express some of my ideas about the potential to imaginatively grow poetry from flowers, plants and trees. When I gaze at individual tree leaves or flower petals, I often see poetry.
A dozen roses for Rainer is the third cooperative game I created and designed in 2004-05. It is a mixed media game experience, comprised of handmade Japanese mulberry paper, dried flowers, banana leaves, pine cones, and silk petals. Research for this unique game project was conducted at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and The Huntington Botanical Gardens in San Marino.