PLAY: Experimentation and Failure

I think about play as a type of prefiguration [1] in that to play is to make the world and to perpetually remake it again and again through enacting it. There are many ways to play, and they often involve some sort of rules. Play can be bounded by prescribed rules – as in a game or sport – which can be tested by strategy and the ability to follow, work through, and work around the given rules. There are also ways to play that are less bounded, in which the rules of play are inscribed more in our material reality than in a rule book. A child building a block tower that may succumb to gravity’s pull if it goes too high or an artist entering a flow state in the studio engage in this kind of play.

In my own work, I play through sample making, a practice of making small-scale material tests to understand materials and techniques and to discover possibilities within material systems. This material play creates knowledge about the materials at hand and about the world more broadly. In all of these types of play, playing is a way of knowing the world through touching and pushing at its boundaries. To play is to follow rules, break them and then set new rules to be followed and broken again – “to re-actualize the rules as one goes along. Or to create rules that demand new actualization every time” [2]. Experimentation and failure are ways of creating and actualizing these rules.

Experimentation is the “action of trying anything,” particularly when the outcome is uncertain [3] and through this trial, new knowledge is produced. As I have reflected on the themes of experimentation and failure over the past few weeks, the unknown and the risk that comes with it have emerged as critical characteristics of both. By pursuing a question or action without knowing where it will lead, experimentation becomes a means of “speculating about possible futures” [4] and results in new ways of understanding and being in the world. It can be approached in a controlled manner, where an idea is proposed, tested, and then analyzed for the success or failure to prove an original theory. In this case, the experiment is performed with an informed idea of what the end results right be and can lead to a conclusion or new iteration. However, this controlled approach to experimentation limits the full scope of possibility available to explore. As articulated by Jack Halberstam, “to begin with a goal and a set of presumptions is to already stymie the process of discovery” [5].

To be truly experimental, we may need to let go of the goal, to take a more playful approach to a type of open experimentation that is guided by asking questions, breaking rules, and diverging. What kinds of discovery and knowledge might emerge from this open experimentation and how do we access it? Halberstam characterizes this as “knowledge from below” [5], an embodied, marginalized, and overlooked type of knowledge that emerges through the failure.

The risk of failure is entangled with the process of experimentation – the possibility for things to fall apart, the encounter of mess and dead ends, the inability to discover anything new. Failure can be fraught, frustrating, wasteful, and disappointing but it can also be a practice in practicing and the disruption prompted by failure is essential to discover material limits and prompt previously unthought questions. An embrace of failure as a step on the way to success has been adopted across fields.

The call to “move fast and break things” encourages rapid iteration that should lead to novel inventions that can be quickly developed into products and services. This outcome-driven model of production is also found in the arts, where processes like sampling are engaged in service of arriving at a final work. Failure, long maligned as the antithesis of success, is now embraced as a means of getting there. But as with the controlled experiment, I wonder whether, if we accept failure only as a means to a greater success, are we really failing? And if not, what possibilities might we be missing out on?

To truly fail, we may need to take on a greater risk, that of the complete unknown. As I imagine this complete unknown, I imagine stepping into an inky dark abyss without knowing where my foot will land. It is vulnerable in its uncertainty. But taking risks allows for unanticipated discovery – not as a means to an expected end, but for the sake of merely learning and knowing. If I step into the abyss, hoping to find a foothold, perhaps instead I will find a welcoming hand, or a supportive embrace, or a comfy seat, or a stairway, or a door, or a loom, or something I can’t yet imagine. And the abyss is also dark, so in the abyss, I could mutate, change my shape, or put on a costume or a disguise. In this way, the complete unknown is also a subversive space, a space of possibility where I might gather with others to create new rules. Where at first the abyss of the complete unknown was a scary dark place, now I can imagine it as a space of unbounded play, from which many types of actions, embodiments, ways of knowing and collaborations could emerge.

Through this conversation, I invite you to step into the complete unknown with me and ponder: if we diverge from a framework of success, is failure still possible? If not, what emerges in its place? Is embracing failure easier said than done? How might we engage experimentation and failure within and beyond the studio? What are the role of rules in play, experimentation, and failure and what are the risks of breaking them? What are the risks of following them?