Rugby Shorts
That’s right – a post about sports! On an arts research blog! Don’t worry – I’ll bring it round. Last year the Rugby World Cup was hosted by France. You may or may not care about this, of the fact that South Africa scraped to victory in a particularly thrilling final. I never played rugby particularly seriously at school. I did represent the ‘D’ team several times, although I’m not sure what I was playing could be described as rugby. I have a passing interest in it – I like the communal aspect of watching pretty much any sport that isn’t golf, but I don’t particularly follow any of them.
For a few of the games I was on holiday in Inverness with a few friends. In the evening we’d sit down and watch the games that were on. And, as I am wont to do, even while watching the game I pulled out my iPad and started doodling on my favourite animation software, Animatic (Doodle.ly 2024). At the time I was experimenting with animating some abstract shapes without any particular plan. But, as ever, because of the lack of plan, the abstract work felt a bit…pointless.
At some point in the process, I started animating some little stick animations about a play or a moment that happened during the game. And suddenly, I was engrossed in what I was doing. I found myself in a ‘flow state’ (Csikszentmihalyi 1990) while making them, or at least finding myself straddling the line between that and watching the game on the TV. But instead of being driven by a particular output (e.g. making a film as part of the research) I found myself making because I *felt *like it – because I thought of something kind of funny and wanted to explore it. I had no plan, and no specific idea of what to animate. For *Rugby Shorts I *I animated a character receiving a kick and going on to score a drop goal. I don’t remember if this actually happened in the game or not, but given the prevalence of kicking in international rugby (a dull part of the game for me) it’s entirely possible. Point is, I didn’t have a specific output in mind, or even an idea – I just started drawing. At least for the first Rugby Short.
For Rugby Shorts II I had a feeling that I had made something entertaining and quite good with I, and that I should follow that idea and see where it went. This where something done purely for fun became something done for fun, AND because the first one was actually quite good – the ‘difficult second album’. However, as the driver was still the aim to make something ‘a bit silly’, I think it’s fair to say that the priority was still making something fun rather than making A Thing.
This was perhaps partly driven by the parameters I accidentally, subconsciously or otherwise, set myself: whatever I made had to be made on the iPad; it also had to be finished by the time the game was over, as I didn’t want to be unsociable. I also didn’t want to carry on ‘working’ while on holiday, so taking these little moments to make things felt like a useful way of producing something creative but not letting it take over the holiday. But indeed being on holiday was a relaxing environment – it wasn’t at home, I wasn’t thinking about work (or at least, trying not to). Essentially, I had created a ‘space’ in which I could make things without feeling too much pressure. And that led to an interesting, creative output.
Months later, my partner would tell me that she’d realised then that when I’m pottering around with something that looked to her like ‘work’ in front of the TV of an evening, that was me relaxing, having a pleasant time – that was me ‘playing’. It wasn’t like I was ‘dual screening’ (Vaccari, Chadwick and O’Loughlin, 2015) – I was engaging in something creative in a comfortable, safe scenario. Sometimes that might be a version of ‘work’, where I’m continuing some practice from during the day but doing it because I enjoy it. But sometimes it was just because I had an idea and wanted to spontaneously explore where it went – notably, away from my home studio space, where I ‘work’.
Almost because of their genesis as ‘throwaway’ pieces of creative nonsense, I had hardly considered Rugby Shorts as part of my research But what they demonstrate is, in many ways, the very essence of my research. By being in a relaxed space I felt creative; when I wasn’t concerned about whether something would be ‘good’ or not (i.e. I was making it ‘for me’) I came up with a piece of creative practice that I found aesthetically and creatively stimulating; that making myself laugh is often a good indicator of whether I will be satisfied by a piece; that this practice could be considered ‘a work’, but not necessarily ‘work’; and that everyone’s play is different. And, on a sort of ‘meta’ note, that making works as part of playful research is impacted by the pressures of it having to be part of the research in the first place. The most interesting ‘work’ for me often comes when I stop trying to make work at all, and just let myself play.
A final note - when I started playing with the animations, they almost became more engrossing than the game itself for the audience too. My friends would watch over my shoulder as I experimented with bits of movement, explored creating some character in very simple lines. Animation as a spectator sport! I confess it’s not for me – too much of a ‘busman’s holiday’ as we say in the UK.
https://vimeo.com/939587009?share=copy
Rugby Shorts I and II (2023)
References
CSIKSZENTMIHALYI, M. 1990. Flow : the psychology of optimal experience, New York, Harper & Row.
DOODLE.LY 2024. Animatic. 3.6.2 ed. Apple App store: Apple.
VACCARI, C., CHADWICK, A. & O'LOUGHLIN, B. 2015. Dual Screening the Political: Media Events, Social Media, and Citizen Engagement. Journal of Communication, 65, 1041-1061.