Text and images from my contribution to the A is for Age-Appropriate panel at CCA 2023, with Sara Grimes, Darshana Jayemanne, Bronwen Swerdfager, and…
toy economics
In Toy Theory I have plotted points at which economic systems and imaginaries are evident in toys and games, from the proto-economics of ancient…
toy animals
This article – in Cultural Politics 20(1), March 2024 – maps the child’s toy and media environment as one populated with artificial animals, from…
PhD as play workshop
First in person iteration of this workshop for PhD Intensive Week at WSA since the pandemic. Much of the time, PhD research and writing…
robot ludologists
video on its way
robot zoo SOTSEF
watch this space added this text 16th nov
Unbox: Cardboard Cinema
The Beauty and the Beast board game is an ingenious engineering of cinematic, narrative and architectonic space into a slot-together cardboard allegory. A tie-in…
AI has always been a toy
We should look to the digital game for the most compelling and generative toyetic source of concepts and material developments in artificial life and…
Mr Happy
This video essay ‘Monsters, mini-games and Mr Happy’ was originally published in Audiovisual thinking: a journal of academic video, no.2, September 2011. The journal seems…
small thoughts on AI & smart design
A 5 minute panel presentation for the WSA Smart Design for the Future conference, 20/4/22, organised by Dr Yuanyuan Yin. Full details on the…
transmedia toyetics
An MA Global Media Management workshop with Maggie Li and Megen de Bruin-Molé: incorporating toy mechanics and media into transmedia storyworlds. Here are monsters…
touch toyetics
A toy stops being a toy when it is no longer touched the relationship between the hand and the toy [is] an example of…