Playing the Cyborg City

Abstract

The topic of a fence concluded an open seminar delivered in 2011 by Georges Pfruender, the head of the Wits School of Arts, that engaged with play in art.¹ He cited a poem by Christian Morgenstern that in turn evoked a fence with ‘spaces in between’. These were taken away by an architect to build a house, the fence became mute and the view horrid but the instigator of this misfortune escaped. It is a helpful hinge to begin this chapter, in part because it picks up the discursive thread where the preceding chapter left off: discussing a Shoe Shop poster that depicted a fence and the related personal narrative it triggered. More importantly, the seminar topic (Playing the City: Urban Games) cues the underlying thematic of this second New Imaginaries project. A MAZE.Interact² was a six-day convergence of art, new media and technology that used gaming as interdisciplinary trope.