I just stumbled upon Matt Locke’s post about play and technology, which is very much worth a read if you are interested in the intersection of play, culture and interactivity. It is basically a summary of his thoughts after having chaired a panel at the We Love Technology conference.
He makes a good argument about technological art moving away from the artistic elite as the costs of the technology come down and the skills required to use it become more commonplace. It’s very much the same line of thinking that fuelled my “Why Big Fine Art Doesn’t Understand Interactivity” essay:
Play has now crossed the line from R&D;, and become an integral part of a mass-design process - the cliched ‘perpetual beta’ of all web 2.0 companies. Rather than a single artist imagining a future and delivering it as a purely aesthetic experience, playful interaction designs are launched onto a market with the understanding than users will invent their own futures for them.
There are lots of useful links in his post too. Go there.