Tag Archives: toys

toying with the archive

I’ve just been awarded a research stipend by the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum at the University of Exeter. Here’s the rationale: My interest in the Bill Douglas collection centres on two categories: Toys in general, and Optical Toys. A particular concern is toys as media objects, both as communication media in their own right and […]

we both know your yearnings

I know who I am, but who are we? Distributed subjectivity in the postindustrial machinic phylum. The card is delivered to me from a fairground fortune-telling machine in the collection of the SeaCity Museum in Southampton. Its message is printed on thick card and has the look of handwriting. It assumes an intimacy between us, […]

toying with the singularity

I’ve added a draft of ‘Toying with the singularity’ to the Publications page – a chapter for The Internet of Toys, edited by Giovanna Mascheroni and Donell Holloway, out soon-ish with Palgrave. Here’s an early version of the introduction: Eight Year 5 children sit around a large table in a primary school classroom. Asked to draw and […]

why so Serious(tm)? playing with LEGO Serious Play

edited excerpt from Ashton and Giddings 2018, At work in the toy box: bedrooms, playgrounds and theories of play in creative cultural work International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation: The appeal of the consultancy programme LEGO Serious Play is in part generated by the tension between work and play. The name itself jams together the Serious and […]

future of toys… network ideas

The central theme of the proposed activity is the future of toys in a digital media culture. Taking recent developments in ‘hybrid’ toy and game design and the ‘Internet of Toys’ – systems that integrate physical toys with digital game technologies and networks- the following questions will be asked: What are the implications for game […]

game tokens

Drawing after a photograph in a New Scientist article about the archaeological discovery in Turkey of game tokens from the early Bronze Age, 5,000 years ago. I wonder about whether this marks a significant shift in the production of artefacts away from the utilitarian or ritual manufacture of individual objects towards the production of […]