Crete gets a direct mention in Toy Theory through the mythical automaton Talos. Constructed by the smith god Hephaestus, this giant bronze warrior patrolled…
Category: toy theory
Crete 2/3: ox machine
The second of three posts linking my recent holiday in Crete with themes from Toy Theory. This toy, a clay figure of an ox…
Crete 1/3: the twin timeline of the rattle
The first of three posts linking my recent holiday to Crete with themes from Toy Theory. Toys as technological devices operate through two very…
Toy Theory
Out in November 2024: Toy Theory: technology and imagination in play. The MIT Press A novel interpretation of the history and theory of technology…
technology and play
Hot off the press: Playground equipment: postdigital design and the mechanics of history, urban space, and play. Space and Culture 27(2). Open access: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/12063312231213261…
models and plans
I write in Toy Theory that play with construction toy sets (LEGO, Meccano, etc.) “collapses design and construction: the child is at once building…
Toy Theory – update
Toy Theory: technology and imagination in play will be out in November. No cover image yet, but here is the draft marketing blurb: A…
A Toy Theory of Drawing
My contribution to the Ordinary Things exhibition: A toy theory of drawing: a short essay to accompany this piece, and the exhibition 2ND—25TH NOVEMBER…
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…
robot ludologists
video on its way
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…