how does Leikki work?
what is Leikki world?
Leikki is a virtual playground for ill children and anyone around accessable through the internet. It provides the possibility to meet, talk, play and enjoy the time there. The new thing about Leikki is its concept of virtual simplicity. We want to bring the challenge of imagination through simple things in analog playing into the virtual world. The cardboard box or even a chair gives an example: no matter what you are playing, it can turn into whatever you need. Mostly however it was used as some vehicle, like Calvin and Hobbes used it as spaceship, through imagination only.
The avatars in Leikki world are no computed creatures. The countable interaction possibilities between a person and a machine cause boredom after a certain period of time and therefore exclusion of potential users.
Often intended interactions are reduced to reactions of either the machine or the user. Therefore we put a real person using the data puppet behind every avatar. The possibilities of acting and interacting can be infinite this way.
The simple objects in Leikki do not evoke any law of appropiate use. The play shows a familiar world, that challenges the childrens' plays in analog world as well as in virtual world.
Liisa goes Leikkiworld:
Liisa has access to Leikki because she is one of many ill children, that need support and childadjusted information about treatments as well as follow-up knowledge. But she also needs to keep in contact with either her family and friends when she is in hospital or her doctors, nurse and samesituated friends from hospital.
She and people around her can enter Leikki through a password.
In the beginning of the play she (her avatar) is welcomed by another avatar, the wizard. The person playing the wizard is a medical educated special actor sitting in the Leikki activity center. The moment Liisa enters her password the wizard recieves a signal and the anamnese story appears on his screen. He takes his puppet and starts talking to Liisa. Liisa herself appears as about the form of her own datapuppet. But she can change her appearance with the wizards help. In his magical closet he stores all different types of costumes, all made out of simple elements.
Liisa chooses to be a princess as strong as Bruce Lee. The wizard touches the princess costume. The approximate form of her puppet remains but now wearing a princess costume. Liisa can choose, what mask she would like to wear. The magic mirror offers a means to change either her own face (scanned by the camera that will come with every computer in the future) or the puppets face.
The actor as well as the child have to wear another tool, that helps moving the avatars arms. This tool consists out of four flexible rings to be worn on the fingertips. Children that lack the possibility to use both hands cannot move their avatars arms but they are provided with some other features instead, which could be having a strong breath (submitted by voice control) that enables them to move things back and forth, up and down. They could grasp things with their avatars strong teeth.
After Liisas transformation (if wished) she has the choice between joining different scapes which are shown to her as a modell or a picture. The wizard accompanies her. The scapes could be space, water, woods, desert. There are maybe other caracters. The wizard is there to help Liiisa playing her favourite play: space princess, that knows all about hearttransplants and who can heal everyones heart. The spaceprincess needs a spacecastle, as Liisa decides.
She can go to the raw material supplier, who offers a small range of different tools and materials as there are cardbord boxes, wooden sticks, some basic tools etc. These materials and tools have virtual abilities, still showing analog features. With support of the objects virtual abilties Liisa can start to built her own surrounding. While building, the bunch of objects take over other abilities, dependent on how many and in what order Liisa put them up.
When Liisa wants to leave, there could be an evaluation program, that has for example already analysed striking words that have been used often. The status of her play is automatically saved on a level of documentation.
others go leikkiworld
Other persons around the ill child recieve
a password through the hospital: parents, school (teachers, friends), doctors.
Their visit however will not be documented. They can only join into Liisas
playworld, the ill child is still the main character in the system.
