Grey

While reading the article “Playing in industrial ruins”, I realized play can happen anywhere, no matter in formal spaces or disordered marginal landscape. I understood the advantages of playing in those marginal places, as the author mentioned: “absence of direct regulation” and “material affordance” with four examples of play categories. However, I still could not feel the happiness or brightness behind the satisfaction people receive while playing in industrial ruins. The color I saw throughout the whole article was grey. Grey, a marginal color between black and white, was the color I could perceived in this article. I felt a lack of hope. Yes, these industrial ruins provide people enough spaces to maximize their imagination and potential capability during play, but that world, which is different from the formal world people live, is fragment. Kids are curious of everything and tend to learn those things equally in the world they perceive. If they are put into a disordered space like industrial ruins to play, all they can perceive are fragments, like “crunchy shards of glass, mulch of mouldering paper, moss and sapling…and the oily residues of industry.” That world full of fragments lacks something called hope. Some people love play and express themselves in industrial ruins, the places that are discarded by society. But, perhaps they are happy because they reach the physical limits of themselves and enjoy the process of doing what ever they want as “hedonists”. It is good to play in a world without rules but do not be addicted of this grey world, especially for children. People become more and more marginalized from the real world as they enjoy staying in a marginalized grey and fragment space. I like to play video games during my spare time, and some of them have adventurous story and violent plot. It’s also like playing in a marginalized space and you can control your character doing whatever you want. I released lots of pressure after playing and that was also why I am still a game lover now. I do not think it is good for me since I know even though entering a different world can offer me the feelings I have never experienced in my daily life, I cannot really learn something. What I got was only physical stimulus and pleasure but not the valuable spiritual enhancement.