Spiegelkabinett. Reflexionen der Designforschung

Editorial

Evelyn Echle — 2026-03-25

Editorial

Evelyn Echle — 2026-03-25

Editorial zum Themenheft

Robert Eikmeyer — 2026-03-25

Editorial on the Special Issue

Robert Eikmeyer — 2026-03-25

Produktive Unbestimmtheit – Playgrounds and Sandboxes als aisthetische Ermöglichungsformen

Natascha Adamowsky — 2026-03-25

Productive Indeterminacy - Playgrounds and Sandboxes as Aisthetic Enablers. A Workshop Report
The following remarks are about a hitherto little-noticed research object in the field of a cultural and media history of play, namely playgrounds and sandboxes or sand as a paradigmatically amorphous medium of play. Playgrounds are historically specific architectures and embody institutionalised ideologies and power relations. Their cultural history is determined by pedagogical, governmental, social-reform and artistic movements that wrestle with the relationship between freedom and control and are shaped by divergent ideas of education and reform thinking, urban planning and social theory, art and childhood, the individual and disciplinary power. They are staged spaces that invite play, and the analysis of their materiality and aesthetic forms aims at describing the play-genuine connection that is forged between players and the world of play, or the play-specific intuition - or insight - to organize spaces and bodies in a way that incites exploration of what surrounds us and who we are. In this sense, playgrounds are predestined scenarios for the attempt to understand play in its environmental nature, which evokes encounters, as aesthetic forms of enabling and 'choreographic' architectures in which these intense connections between player and play object, between people and their surrounding world, unfold. The question is therefore not only: What are playgrounds? but also: What are the grounds of play?

Die Schatten von Gestern – Huizingas „Homo Ludens“ und seine Bedeutung für die (Computer)Spielforschung

Felix Raczkowski — 2026-03-25

The Shadows of Yesterday – Huizinga’s Homo Ludens and its Meaning for Game Studies Today
Huizinga’s Homo Ludens is a foundational work for contemporary game studies and often credited as the source for similarly important and controversial concepts like the magic circle. The paper recontextualizes the Homo Ludens through Huizinga’s other works on play and situates it in the historical circumstances that shaped its writing and publication. This enables a new perspective on Huizinga’s idea of play as a phenomenon that’s removed from everyday life, a concept that was subject to particularly controversial debate among game researchers. The paper argues that Huizinga’s position on the exceptional nature of play has to be understood as a political intervention to recover play from the attempts of political appropriation. This solution is then criticized in the light of more recent attempts to position digital games and play as a-political artifacts and activities.

Ludutopia

Anne Dippel — 2026-03-25

Ludutopia. On the Ethnography of Ludic Phenomena at CERN and the Cultural Scientific Meaning of Play. Performance Lecture
This article deliberately and playfully breaks with the format of the classic article. As a smoothed transcript, it allows the reader to comprehend the theatrical nature of scientific productions as well as the ludic power of free speech, in which things arise in the moment because everything is in play. The talk explores the ludic as meth‐odology, practice, and theory. It focusses especially on the interference of work and play, generally understood as two opposing phenomena. While work is associated with con‐trol, seriousness, zeal, and discipline, play appears as a haven of idleness, a welcome diversion from everyday fronts. In this lecture these clear distinctions are questioned and become subject of a cultural-anthropological revision using the example of how to get into an ethnographic field and how play becomes central within the scientific culture of physicists. Based on ethnographically collected data at the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN), I reflect on the ludic as fundamental modality of human experience in a digital, post-Fordist and cosmopolitan work context. In doing so, I ask the ever-present question of the extent to which what we observe is co-constituted by the way we name it and the way it is conceptualized by our fields: The new and the ludic as such are thus captured in the moment of ethno‐graphic recording and the performance of lecturing.

Tollste Kunst – Kunst spielen

Larissa Kikol — 2026-03-25

Greatest Art - Play Art
The childlike and the playful are examined in their aesthetic manifestations in contemporary art. Whether painting, sculpture, installation or the self-representation of artists - the phenomenon of playfulness ranges from childlike visual languages to sports. And the art market also functions through playful levels that connect childishness to erotic attraction. The two theses presented above, "The adult is a better child." and "Art is the better childhood." are explained in these contexts. Of course, the art world is not understood as a real, pedagogical place of healing, nor is a pious faith in art to be reactivated. This essay discusses artists such as Joseph Beuys, Raymond Pettibon, Charlemagne Palestine, Andi Fischer, Okka-Esther Hungerbühler, Mehmet and Kazim, and Laurent Perbos. Excerpts from the Art Basel art fair serve as sociological insights into playful charms of the art market.

Pforzheimer Spielemanifest

Jonathan Meese — 2026-03-25

Pforzheimer Spielemanifest, entstanden anlässlich der Tagung Homo faber ludens am 5. und 6. Mai 2022 an der Fakultät für Gestaltung der Hochschule Pforzheim.

KUNST = Spiel

Robert Eikmeyer — 2026-03-25

Art = Play. Or why Dr. No is more than a Spaghetti Mabuse
On Jonathan Meese and Slavoj Žižek, ideology-free play, art as a form of government, Dr. Mabuse the Gambler, prison records, Friedrich Nietzsche, G.W.F. Hegel, the digestion of knowledge, world formulas, NOMAD, adventurers of the future and, of course, jokes about psychiatrists and draftees and what it is after all.

Die spielerische Versammlung der Welt oder Heideggers Topologie des Spiels

Stefan W. Schmidt — 2026-03-25

The Playful Assembly of The World or: Heidegger's Topology of Play
In dealing with the concept of play, the focus is often on games in which something is handled, be it very concretely toys, play figures, or other objects that are interwoven into the practice of play. This also applies to Lego or sand as complex, because not fixed, toys. Even computer games depend on a material interface, insofar as they need connection to our corporeality. All these
games already move within a certain framework of under standing. Things receive their meaning in the interaction of the game. The philosopher Martin Heidegger, however, uses the concept of play and the characteristics of play to describe that fundamental event which makes a horizon of understanding possible in the first place. Not only that of concrete games of all kinds, but of our understanding in general. Heidegger calls this event Spiegel-Spiel (mirror-game). The article examines this notion as well as the importance that things as artifacts play in this regard, and shows the extent to which Heidegger understands man as
a homo faber ludens.

Mehr als ein Spiegel von Gesellschaft – Spielregeln und Spielweisen für eine Forschung an und mit Gesellschaftsspielen

Valentin Köberlein — 2026-03-25

More than a Mirror of Society – Rules for Research on and with Board Games
Board games and gameplay have not been considered much in science so far. Often the game was and is considered either as a sociological phenomenon or an object in its materiality. But research on board games can offer more: by looking at the game and play experience altogether, new insights can be gained into how games and society relate to each other. Starting with an introduction into the history of board games, the text quickly introduces the two main parts of scientific board game research: GAME and PLAY. GAME refers to the whole materiality. This also includes the mechanics and ways of playing laid down in the rules. PLAY, on the other hand, means the concrete experience of playing, which can only arise in interaction with the object. So far, research has only rarely considered the interplay of both. Yet, both are inseparable categories. By looking at both GAME and PLAY combined, we can illustrate the influence of board games on society and on us, humans, and focus more on board games as research objects.

Was zählt?

Steffen Bogen — 2026-03-25

What Counts? Game Studies, Board Games and Numbers
The article outlines a ludological-mathematical approach that does not view board games as an old form and genre of gaming, but rather focuses on more recent developments in game design. Their goal is to involve the player collective in the design and fine-tuning of games. Counting discrete units is essential for analog board games, even when relatively archaic counting aids are used. The procedures by which scores are determined and changed are not hidden in the depths of a program code, but are open on the table. In recent decades, complex board game architectures have been developed that reflect this process and make it part of the gaming experience. From a design perspective, it becomes clear that the range of fluctuations is limited depending on the situation and the course of the game determines how values come into play independently or coupled. In the form of input randomness, chance does not mark limits of control, but rather determines how individually a group can react to fluctuating options and ensure fun and repetition through variability. This thesis is presented in a brief comparison of the “old school” Monopoly and the door-opening CATAN. Modern board games are models for the adaptability of collectives, which is not based on a higher authority of control and omniscience, but on the partial freedom and independence of the participants, who are connected to each other via more or less well-formatted particles.

Ein (fiktives) Interview zur Proteinsynthese des Spiels mit dem Spieleforscher Thomas Voit und Sky Team

Tabea Schmid — 2026-03-25

The interview with Professor Thomas Voit, a researcher at EMPAMOS, and the game Sky Team as fictional partner explores the interplay between game research, gamification, and motivational psychology. Voit discusses the mechanisms of motivation in games and their potential applications in non-gaming contexts, such as education and organizational processes. Sky Team exemplifies the fusion of simulation and cooperative gameplay, emphasizing elements like restricted communication, time limits, and immediate feedback to foster engagement and team dynamics. The dialogue delves into the deconstruction of games into modular elements and the creation of a Game Design Toolbox, enabling the transfer of motivational patterns to real-world challenges. This interdisciplinary approach sheds light on how games can enhance autonomy, competence, and social connectedness, offering innovative solutions for learning environments and cultural institutions.

ARS SIMIA NATURAE

Thomas Hensel — 2026-03-25

ARS SIMIA NATURAE. Martin Gerlach’s Monkey
Established in the late nineteenth century to serve Pforzheim’s globally connected jewelry industry, the collection of teaching materials of the local School of Arts and Crafts was exceptionally focused yet heterogeneous, comprising books, journals, photographs, slides, jewelry, casts, taxidermy, and even living plants and animals. The collection exemplifies a broader shift associated with Art Nouveau: away from historicist quotation and toward nature as a primary source of artistic invention. Martin Gerlach’s widely used pattern books, all held in Pforzheim, seem to endorse this naturalist program. Yet the text argues that their imagery was never simply “direct from nature.” Rather, Gerlach’s compositions were highly mediated, art-historically informed, and symbolically charged. This becomes clear in the analysis of Festons und decorative Gruppen and its striking plate featuring a monkey. Far from being a merely exotic motif, the monkey activates a long iconographic tradition in which it signifies the tension between mechanical copying and imaginative transformation. By linking Gerlach’s imagery to early modern art theory, alchemical notions of ars simia naturae, and the epistemic model of the Kunst- und Wunderkammer, the essay interprets the Pforzheim collection as a modern cabinet of curiosities: a generative “playground” where nature, art, and invention interact.

the box

Eva Grünebaum — 2026-03-25

the box. entstand an der Fakultät für Gestaltung der Hochschule Pforzheim im Sommersemester 2022 im Rahmen eines Seminars zum Thema Absurdität im Studiengang Industrial Design.