Week 6: Lateral Thinking - Tangram

Nur Liyana Yanti Binte Kamarudin

Nur Aliah Binte Omar

Rachel

Wei Wen Xuan

Grace Tan Wei Qi

Anathapindika

Class Activity - Tangram 

The tangram is a dissection puzzle consisting of seven flat shapes, called tans, which are put together to form shapes. The objective of the puzzle is to form a specific shape (given only an outline or silhouette) using all seven pieces, which may not overlap. Read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangram

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

No. 1 - animals

camel

cat

turtle

crab

kangaroo

rabbit

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

No. 2 - human figure

a person standing

swimming

playing football

waving

------------------------------------------------------------------

No. 3 - alphabets

'W'

'E'

'J'

'M'

'G'

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Reflection 

gift from my primary school during children's day

A classic game of learning and creativity, the Tangram. Even if we have not played it, we definitely have seen it. Limited with using all seven pieces and not overlapping them, we are to create things out of these shapes.

A memory from my primary school days, students coming together the moment we receive this gift from the school, like all the immature and competitive kids around, competing to see who can create the weirdest, funniest and craziest things.

Never knew I'll touch this game again after all these years. Thinking that at our age, we'll be more sane and much smarter than when we were younger and we would play it much better. The truth does not seem that way. Seems like we became too sane and too smart to create things instantly; we became easily mind-blocked.

The Tangram does live up its title of being a Classic Game though. At one point, we are no longer the 'sane' and 'smarter' mind-blocked person, we became the 'immature' and 'competitive' kid in us. Unknowingly, within a few rounds of activities in class, our minds burst with ideas and our competitive minds just would not tolerate patterns second best. Arranging and rearranging the patterns, there are just too many possibility of doing it and when it comes to presentation, there are also too many ways of reading it. 

Although it is not a game that we will play everyday, or that will be of direct use to our daily live, we have learnt much from this activity;
- there are always many ways of creating regardless the limitations
- there are many ways of viewing and reading regardless the initial meaning

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Some creative modern Tangram designs

Tangram shelves from Lago - Italy

The tangram in metro station of Gimpo airport - Korea

Furniture design - ARCHMAGE