Snake the Planet!
Snake the Planet! by MPU is a new project in Sydney that takes the classic mobile phone game ‘Snake’ and “adopts it for the urban canvas”. When …
112 Posts
Play
Understanding Interactivity Through Play
Some months ago I officially became Dr. Polaine (Andy Polaine, PhD. for you Americans) and have been planning to write a series of posts about the main themes …
Teaching, Learning and Mazes
The COTEN project is gaining momentum and there are some excellent discussions going on. A lot of the conversation is about different teaching and institutional …
Sparks - Playful Innovation
Philips Design has created a boardgame called Spark to help generate insights. It looks like it is a pretty simple premise – there are a set of characters …
Social Play
I’ve just finished up a chapter in my PhD about social play. Most of it is about online interaction, but quite a bit is about how to bring strangers …
New magneticNorth web site
Great to see magneticNorth’s new website live. Brendan gave me a sneak peek of it yesterday and I love it. The navigation is very playful and intuitive. …
Chrome Experiments
Josh Nimoy has made a version of his (unpleasantly named) Ball Droppings piece for Google’s Chrome Experiments site. Simple and addictive, you basically …
Tonematrix
Inspired by the Tenori-On, Andre Michelle put together Tonematrix. Each square creates a wave force that spreads across the grid (I don’t think that …
IDEO Play with VR
Regular readers will know I’m pretty cynical about VR and I’ve never been much of a fan of the CAVE system. The last time I used one at iCinema I …
One free (playful) interaction
Great collection of “free interactions” and insightful commentary from Chris Noessel on the Cooper blog. Basically these are little interactive …
Playing Word Games in Blog Comments
I just noticed a whole series of word-association and other games going on in the comments of Fail Blog posts. I have no idea if this is a new phenomenon, but I …
The Rules of Currency
Image: J0nB0n Stephen Sniderman’s excellent 1999 essay, Unwritten Rules, in The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology talks about the tacit …
Tim Brown on Serious Play
I would have loved to have gone to the Serious Play conference, but seem to remember it cost serious money too. This talk from Tim Brown of IDEO sums up a great …
The Unfinished Swan
The Unfinished Swan is a still in-development game set in an entirely white world. Instead of splattering the blood of monsters around the walls, the player …
Palin Bingo
A variant of bullshit bingo, Jesper Juul played Palin Bingo during the vice presidential debate (did she really never mention her family?). I like “Air …
Designing Education's Future
I gave a presentation yesterday at Northumbria University’s School of Design’s staff conference called Designing Education’s Future: online, …
Flap to Freedom
Flap to Freedom from Chris O’Shea on Vimeo. Battery hens flap to help battery hens in the Flap to Freedom installation that Chris O’Shea and …
Rubik's Cube. Magic.
During some research into the history of Rubik’s Cube for my PhD, I stumbled across this video of freaky mind control an amazing trick by Keith Barry …
Play as you go - hijacking public spaces
A quick reblog of Pixelsumo’s post about Bruno Taylor’s work hijacking public places to make playful spaces, which explores the notion that play is …
Core77 Broadcast interview with Troika
A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of interviewing Sebastien and Eva from Troika, the studio behind the Cloud and All The Time In The World installations at new …
Playful Revolutions Presentation
After my Flash on the Beach talk last year I promised to put the recordings online of my talk and the others that I had listened to. I completely didn’t …
Programming for children
Following on from my post and Nigel’s comments about Clicktoy, I just found Scratch, which is a simple multimedia authoring environment for children. It …
Public Bench Camera Play
Jay tied a disposable camera to a public bench with a note asking people to play. Amazingly it didn’t get nicked and the whole roll was shot by the end of …
Maze Frenzy
Some little games, like Line Rider are simple and instantly addictive. Quite a few of my students have tried to build something like Maze Frenzy in the past, …
ClickToy - A game for two year-olds
Image: ClickToy Interactive Inc. Old skool interaction designers will remember Grandma and Me and the rest of Broderbund’s Living Books series. Those …
Jackson Pollock Interactive
Once again proving that the simple interactives are often the most engaging and playful, this Jackson Pollockpiece by Miltos Manetas and Stamen has apparently …
Game Controller Family Tree
From the old, beloved Atari 2600 joystick to the Wiimote, how did we get from there to here? The “Sock Master’s” family tree of controllers …
Parents to be educated about the Interweb
There’s a well-balanced piece from Patrick Wintourin the Guardian today about parents being shown how to protect their children online. It reports of a …
Playful Measuring Jug
Metric is so passé. Just how much is a hill of beans? I’m not sure, but I know the problems of three little people don’t amount to one. On the other …
Every (Nintendo) Video Game Online, Free
Everyvideogame.com is an archive of “all the Nintendo games you grew up with - online and free”. I was more of a Atari, ZX Specturm and Sega man …
Creative Play helps children's self-control
There’s an interesting piece about Creative Play on NPR at the moment that looks at a school running the Tools of the Mind programme. One of the findings …
Mac Virus with Gravitas
Troika, the folks behind the cloud sculpture at Heathrow, have created a virus on a USB stick, called the Newton Virus (for manual infection) that makes your …
iPlay - interactivity without the flab
Chris just posted an interesting find called the iPlay. It’s basically an interactive playground frame game, which means that children have to run around …
LED Toilet Door Mix-Up Signs, Denmark
Those crazy Danes. (Image stolen from djaphrael) Amusing project over at Halfmachine which involved making toilet door signs from LEDs in a club. Of course, …
Jiggling Icons on the iPhone
There are plenty of big announcements and coverage of Steve Jobs’s Macworld keynote. I’m happy to see the new AppleTV, movie downloads and rentals, …
NetX Digital Cardboard Christmas
It’s nice to see digital agencies do non-digital (sort of). My German pal, Tim Buesing, who now lives and works in Sydney at NetX just sent me the NetXmas …
Benettonplay's Video Grid
Proving that the oldies are indeed the goldies, the Fabrica have re-made their video grid idea in Flash for your online interactive enjoyment. Amazing how …
Fireside chat with Brendan Dawes
I promised to put online the chat I had with magneticNorth’s Creative Director, Brendan Dawes, from when we were at Flash On the Beach 07. I’ve been …
Plumen - low energy, high style
My mate Nik Roope has been busily working up another smart idea to brighten up the lack of imagination in the marketplace again. This time it’s the Plumen …
Poke's Never-Ending Web Page for Orange
I meant to post this last week but was travelling and forgot. Take a look at the never-ending web page that Poke designed for the Orange Unlimited campaign …
Games, Play and Web Applications
[Dan Saffer’s](http://www.odannyboy.com/blog/new_archives/2007/10/presentation_ga.html] latest presentation called Gaming The Web: Using the structures of …
IKEA Dream Kitchen
The multi-camera technique that freezes a moment in time, but allows you to pan around in space (popularised as bullet time in The Matrix, but it has quite a …
Interactive Gestures Wiki
Multitouch screens of all shapes and forms are really all the rage, but with them come whole new paradigms of interaction. Do you wave like a Wii or do the …
Hereafter by United Visual Artists
United Visual Artists have a lovely new piece called Hereafter, which is very similar to elements of my Time Sketches in that it layers frames from a video …
Out of Bounds interview with Chris O' Shea
Chris O’ Shea recently completed Out of Bounds during his residency at the Design Museum. Chris also writes the very good Pixelsumo from which I …
Interactive Wall of 'Water'
Camera-tracking along with multi-touch seem to be unstoppable at the moment. This is an interactive wall of ‘water’ for Lenovo’s HQ in North …
Light on Pixelsumo
Nice set of posts on playful, interactive household lights from Chris over at Pixelsumo. I’m particularly partial to Hector Srrano’s Superpatata …
Interactive Banner Ad from Adobe
I interacted with a banner ad today, and actually enjoyed it. Adobe’s Creative License campaign is currently on display at Coudal Partners’ Layer …
Touchscreen implications for mobile gaming
Interesting piece by Stuart Dredge on the implications that touchscreens (read: iPhone) interfaces have for mobile gaming over at Pocketgamer. Of course there …
Playful Plates
Witty, playful everyday things seem to be all over the place at the moment. Chris at Pixelsumo just posted about these embossed plates, called Don’t Play …
Speaking at Flash on the Beach
I’m very pleased to have been invited to speak at Flash on the Beach in Brighton. FOTB runs from 4th- - 7th November and my session is on the last day. I …
Playful Signage
Whilst at Urban Learning Space I noticed the lovely, playful signage all around the building at The Lighthouse (originally a Charles Rennie Mackintosh …
Break-time at Playpen
I’m going to take a few days off for a break, so I probably won’t be blogging for a couple of weeks. But stay tuned, there is much more to come as …
Two-Way Tangible Interface: PICO
[](hysical Intervention in Computational Optimization) PICO (Physical Intervention in Computational Optimization) by James Patten is a tangible interface that …
Game and Watch
Whilst Googling around for some examples of Nintendo’s Game and Watch I came across the aptly-named Game and Watch site, which snapped me back to …
Data Visualisation Approaches
There’s a great post on Data Visualization: Modern Approaches over at Smashing Magazine. Some of them are pretty well-known, like Newsmap and (one of my …
Second Life is like an empty restaurant
I wrote a post a while back about how dull I thought it was that Adaptive Path were researching Second Life (along with many, far too many, media academics). I …
Etched in Time
In almost all of the course on interactivity that I have taught, someone comes up with the idea of making a screen-based Etch-A-Sketch toy. They’re almost …
The Playmakers
I’ve just been introduced to a wonderful book. It’s called Timeless Toys: Classic Toys and the Playmakers Who Created Them , by Tim Walsh and …
StumbleUpon is the Antirom of the Web
Or - In Praise of Randomness Whilst thinking about writing a post in praise of randomness in interaction design, I realised that StumbleUpon is, in many ways, …
Director Lives Again for Retro Games
Like all of us at Antirom, Macromedia’s Director was a revolution because it allowed a bunch of non-coders to make interactive ‘stuff’. The …
Where to now with multitouch?
I’ve been doing a bit of catching up with my blog reading recently and noticed Chris’s post on Pixelsumo about the HP giant Multi-Touch screen with …
Pixel popping on the phone
I just had an update from Karl Willis about a project called Twelve Pixels that he has been working on with Dr. Ivan Poupyrev at Sony’s CSL Interaction …
The playfulness of everyday things
As if they had been the perfect students of my Interactivity, Play and the Everyday project at the Bauhaus, art/design cooperative, BCXY have been working on a …
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer talk at the Tate Modern
One of my all-time interactive installation heroes, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, is giving an artist’s talk at the Tate Modern tomorrow. He is representing …
Another Antirom RGB performance
I was clearing out some old CDs and found a Videobrasil XII one with this Antirom RGB performace on it. I think Gisela may have shot the footage as there are …
Photosynth
Nice to see Microsoft doing something truly groundbreaking, or at least acquiring something truly groundbreaking. The above demo of Photosynth and Seadragon by …
Google's Streetview
So I’ve been a bit slow at blogging about Google’s Streetview as well as Microsoft’s Surface. I nearly didn’t write about either of them …
More Surface Information
Chris over at Pixelsumo just mailed me some more links to do with the background and technology behind the Microsoft Surface table. One is from Ars Technica and …
Microsoft Surface
I strangely don’t have a lot to say about the already well-blogged offer from Microsoft, Microsoft Surface. It’s obviously pretty and nice and …
Multitouch City Wall
The CityWall is a new work by the Ubiquitous Interaction (Uix) research group in Helsinki as part of the IPCity project. It gathers tagged images and video from …
Draw on Walls, with Light
A while ago Chris O’ Shea wrote about the Philips Simplicity Project, which had a number of mainly light-based inventions, several of them interactive. …
Polar Clock
Clocks and calendars seem to permanently popular as interaction/Flash design subjects. John Maeda arguably started the trend, then Yugo did a few. This one from …
Type it in. Hear it sung.
Read the graphic for Let them sing it for you below: I wish I had the patience to cut all those song snippets up.
Reactable cacophony
Evidently Reactable has been around for a couple of years, but I hadn’t heard about it until one of my ex-students, Gabi, sent me the link. Undoubtedly …
Cabaret Mechanical Theatre
I’m super happy to see Chris O’Shea’s post about his visit to the Kinetica Museum to see the retrospective exhibition of the Cabaret …
Play matters. Do it first.
As you know I think and write about play quite a bit and am a big advocate of most of what Pat Kane writes about in The Play Ethic. My interests are a …
Google Map anomolies and Twitter
Two posts in one, what a bargain. Karl sent me a link to Craig’s Flip Flop Flying blog because of his post about Google Maps anomalies. Basically as …
Poke Wins With Cock
Thought that title might get your attention. Congratulations to Poke for their Digital Design - Commercial win at the Design Week Awards 2007 with …
Magic Mirror
The Big Space have created a Magic Mirror for retail environments. It utilises RFID tags and a rear projection onto a mirror (and, of course, magic) to blend …
Muscle Memory and the Wii
What with all the cool things people are doing with Wiimotes I nearly bought a Wii yesterday, but wasn’t terribly convinced by the games. This post from …
Djing with the Wii
There’s been a whole lot going on about the Wiimote as an interface to pretty much everything. It’s very flexible, relatively cheap and easy to use …
Desire of Codes
Apart from David Rokeby’s talk and Stelarc and a couple of other things at Transmediale 07, I spent an entertaining afternoon checking out the open …
Everything is a Toy with RFID tags
I’ve already posted some thoughts about this project by Yuichiro Katsumoto on the Bauhaus blog so I won’t repeat here save to say that I like this …
Invitation À Jouer
I was recently contacted by Yves Bernard who writes the ArtNumeur blog about a piece I wrote a for the Game/Play exhibition little while back called An …
Games Studies Journal new issue
The new issue of the Games Studies journal, Volume 6, Issue 1 was published in December, just in case you missed it in the holiday rush. Here are the contents: …
Light Tracer wins Tokyo TDC Award
I’m a bit late with this announcement due to the holidays, but I’m very happy to see that an ex-student of mine, Karl D. D. Willis won the …
UVA's Volume on YouTube
I wrote a little while back about UnitedVisualArtists’ new work, Volume, that is being shown at the V&A; at the moment. Joel from UVA sent me a mail …
The Power of Red Buttons
Having just mistyped a domain name and been sent to one of those really irritating ‘parked domain’ search pages, I saw this pop-up. Normally, I …
Low tech accidents
Whilst looking through some old archives of work (and also the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive) I re-found a gif that I made for my very first …
UVA's Volume at the V&A
A bit of cross-posting from my Bauhaus blog here, but worth it. Chris O’Shea over at Pixelsumo has written up a good description of a new work, Volume, by …
Analogue In, Digital Out
I just read Brendan Dawes’s new book, Analogue In, Digital Out, in one day. A day when I was teaching all day too. I even stayed up late to finish it. …
Top Hat and a Tail
So of course Greyworld’s Andrew Shoben couldn’t let me name-check Antirom on YouTube without sending me one of his own. This one of him wearing a …
Funtain - bad name, nice idea
I hate the name, but Funtain is a nice idea. It plays with water and sound and plugs into those strong childhood memories of playing with water. Thanks to Karl …
Antirom Performance
I love YouTube, it really is becoming the archive of the world. Here’s a bit of the RGB performance Nic Roope, Joe Stephenson and I did when we were at …
Pixelsumo links
Rather than cross-posting from my Bauhaus blog, I just want to point you in the direction of a post with some very good links on interactivity, environments and …
The Black Box Interface
As most of us know, phones don’t make brilliant music players or games machines. Sure, they can do that stuff, but the 0 to 9 buttons, tiny screen and …
Playful Interactivity
I have just read great paper called Adding Playful Interaction to Public Spaces by Amnon Dekel et al. from The Hebrew University Jerusalem and The Bezalel …
The Changing Nature of Play
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, …
Line Rider
Line Rider is possibly one of the coolest toys I have come across for some time since SodaConstructor or some of Fabrica’s toys. It’s a really great …
Insights into Jonathan Ive
Businessweek have a great selection of in-depth articles about Apple’s Senior Vice-President for Industrial Design, Jonathan Ive and they give a real …
Benettonplay Toybox
Whilst we are talking about all things Fabrica, go and play in the Benettonplay Toybox - lot’s of amusing little interactive pieces to prove the point …
Interview with Andy Cameron
The ever-brilliant and plugged-in Regine Debatty from we-make-money-not-art.com recently interviewed my previous lecturer and co-Antirommer, Andy Cameron, now …
Google Flight Sim
Okay, so once again I’m so far behind the curve on this one I’ve wrapped around and am in front again (I reckon). Mark Caswell-Daniels’ …
Re-imagining Higher Education
Recently I have been giving much thought to the structure and issues that most of us in Higher Education have been struggling with for several years. There are …
The Play Ethic and Sustainability
For a very long time now (since 2005 in fact), Pat Kane’s book, The Play Ethic has been on my Amazon Wishlist (hint, hint) along with several other books …
Invitation to play at the Game / Play exhibition
I recently wrote a catalogue essay called The Invitation to Play (thanks to Mark Pesce for that phrase) for the Game/Play networked exhibition displayed …
Khronos Projector - turning back time
I’m having a depressing time for “things I wish I had made” right now. Karl just sent me the link to the Khronos Projector, which is a …
Taking the emotional temperature of the world
I feel very jealous, but also excited. Every so often, okay very often, someone makes a piece of interactive work that I really, really wish I had created. More …
Throwies - LED Graffiti
I can’t believe I haven’t come across the Instructables website before - it’s a kind of collaborative How To for all sorts of things. These …
My 'Time Sketches' on display at the Powerhouse Museum
I’m very pleased to announce that two of my interactive works are currently on display at the Powerhouse Museum thanks to the wonderful people over at the …
Less Work, More Play - presentation at Neue-Digitale
I’ve just had a very enjoyable afternoon at Neue-Digitale in Frankfurt interviewing co-founder, Olaf Czeschner, for Desktop but also giving a presentation …