Selling books, sketching dragons, and scooping cowry shells.
Last game you played? Tiny Bookshop has bewitched me, body and soul. I love how many real books the game incorporates, even with the repeats–I’m never gonna be upset at the chance to recommend Animorphs #1: The Invasion.
What’s a topic you’d like to make a documentary about? Ahahahahahahah. Animorphs.
Quote from a reading you’d recommend? “Playgrounds explain how materiality and activity are joined together in the selected spaces of play. Playgrounds as metaphors also allow us to escape from game spaces, which are designed for the purpose of playing games but do not always allow the exploration of the creative and appropriative capacities of play. If play spaces are defined by something, from skater parks to Proteus, that is the openness to appropriation, the ways in which they let us play, giving us a place to be.” from Play Matters, by Miguel Sicart (p. 59). Another playful thinking entry that’s really easy to breeze through and a have a bunch of springboard thoughts about.
What’s something you’ve done, written, or helped create that you’re proud of? I cooked up a scaly mascot for our upcoming Here There Be Dragons? workshop on historical fantasy in Ink for The Interactive Pasts 4. To say this and not show you the guy I drew is unimaginably cruel, I know, but you’ll just have to join us at the conference!
Where’s your favorite place you’ve lived or visited? Taipei was an incredibly special place to get to live, even if briefly.
What gadget would you like to try or already have and can recommend? This is another Luddite answer, sorry, but I just invested in a new agenda/notebook combo, with a handmade leather cover to boot. Looove to write things down.
Where and when are you most productive? I answered this last month, but I would also say I’m most productive after I’ve been able to take a step away and rest for a bit, as I have this summer. Take breaks, kids!
What’s something you used to be good at but can’t do now? I used to be really really good at classic Indian board games like Pallanguzhi (pictured: my grandmother with her newly crafted game board) and Carom. I love the way that spending short bursts of time getting acquainted with the physicality of those kinds of games can give you hyperspecific hand-eye coordination/competence. It’s on my to-do list to re-introduce myself to them.
What question should be swapped out for another? Let’s change What’s something you used to be good at but can’t do now? to What’s a game that you really should’ve played by now?
Keerthi Sridharan is a PhD candidate in the Playful Time Machines project. Their research is centered around games and play as spaces that facilitate and complicate processes of identification, identity construction, and relationality. Previous work has examined emotional play in TTRPGs, perspective in player-character interaction, and language as a playful resource in conversational interaction. They are a sociolinguist by trade, and a gamer by choice. Their spare time is spent stress-baking, making music, and drafting Twine games.
