November 16th, 2009 / 2:25 pm
Behind the Scenes

“Everyday Pretending is something you do with a bit of your brain, with the edges.”

Via Boing Boing, here is an awesome photoessay by Russell Davies on playfulness originally delivered at the Playful conference in London. From the essay:

Everyday Pretending is something you do with a bit of your brain, with the edges. It’s a thing of inattention, not concentration. Compare, for example, the Theory Of Fun piano stairs with Greyworld’s tuned railings. The stairs thing is fun and it makes a point, but it would drive you mad after a while, there’s no subtlety to it, no joy in the discovery, nothing hidden, it’s all on the surface. It’s that totalising instinct of so many ‘brand’ people – make things obvious, make things clear. There’s a parallel in the maniacal world-building instinct of games people – leave no detail unturned, offer no escape from the vision … We don’t need many cues to help us pretend. We’ll find meaning in the noisiest noise – just give us a tiny signal and we’ll come up with a message.

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