a game of
creative connections
for
educators
museums
everyone
because
and
Let’s say this breastplate is on the board.
1
1
This breastplate was given to an Aboriginal man by a white Australian settler.
Body-labelling
You place a branding iron because…
for educators
To rise to emerging challenges, we all need to skill up on creative thinking. Forging links between faraway concepts is a great, fun way to do that.
Amazingly, when students practise this kind of play with real-world things, situations and events… startling insights emerge.
We’re adding more material all the time, and you can upload your own in order to work – or play – on any problem you want.
See this page for school teachers, or jump in and try it for yourself.
for museums
You’ve got heaps of significant stuff, and you want it to be known and loved.
Sembl players make connections between collection items – which is a surprisingly good way to gain insight into a thing itself.
Contributing material to Sembl is easy. To maximise attention to its collection a museum may also become a premier game host. To learn more, see this page for museums.
Also, have a go.
for everyone
Don’t we all want peace, justice, love and understanding?
We live with all kinds of social divisions that imbalance the world and create conflict within it. You can use Sembl to look across the divides. Seek out similarities, and notice differences dissolve and then clarify.
Experiencing dense network connectivity can awaken us to what matters.
Play.
for computation?
Computers process with binary logic; we think in analogue. If only they could understand how we think, how much more handy would they be?
Sembl cultivates an ever-growing index of human analogies. Potentially, that is very useful.
Smart people say…
Visually and spatially appealing, Sembl is a powerful catalyst for imaginative and lateral creative thinking. It will challenge and encourage users, especially children, to think creatively and construct scenarios both real and imagined, and discover explanations otherwise not obvious or viewed as possible.
As an Indigenous person, I can say that Sembl shares core principles with many traditional knowledge systems. Seeing and knowing how we are connected helps us to articulate the position and potential we have – both individually and collectively – in the broadest scheme of things.
I’m also excited by Sembl’s value as a cross-cultural interface. By making connections and recognising relationships, we learn to value difference.
Sembl incredibly succesfully mixes competitive and collaborative play, creativity and expression, and exploration and inspiration. It’s the sort of game you think about when you’re not playing it, and it’s the sort of game that helps you see the world in new ways.
Ready to sembl?
Sembl’s lifeblood is openly-licensed cultural material.
- It’s free to play.
- It’s playable on tablet or desktop.
- Game data – sembls, ratings etc – will be shared with museums and other parties for use in their own interfaces.
- The codebase is open source, so the system can be adapted, refined and extended for the benefit of all.
Historical image credits – Animal magnetism, 1802, Wellcome Library, London // Diagram of atmospheric effects, 1846, Wellcome Library, London // Training at the Technical College, Canberra, c1940, State Library of Victoria // Palais Royal, c1904, J Paul Getty Museum // Hot air balloon above the clouds, Wellcome Library, London // Branding iron and breastplate, National Museum of Australia // Analytical engine by Charles Babbage, 1840, London Science Museum via a Haverford College resource on the history of mechanised thought // Arabic machine for a water-powered system, c16th–19th-century, Wikimedia // Microscopic organisms with mineral skeletons by Ernst Haeckel, Rhizopoda Radiaria, 1862, Biodiversity Heritage Library // Lacquered wooden domestic shrine, 19th century, Wellcome Library, London.
