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“the toys of today are the realities of tomorrow” In fact, all
inventions start by playing and tinkering and going into the hypnogogic
state, the state between wakefulness and sleep when one does not think
strictly “logically”. Einstein came up
with his theory of relativity and often spoke of his dreams and daydreams. Mindflex Games http://mindflexgames.com/
Children today expect some sort of stimulation from their toys. The
following would not be an unrepresentative sampling of what you will find in
the local Toys R Us stores:Rambo first blood, Masters
of the universe, the evil horde fright, Headmaster skull cruncher, Gotcha
enforcer set, Phototon electric warrior battle gun,
Spurious armored battle station, Proton blaster – captain powe3r and the
soldiers of the future, Princess of power doll, Go for it- the game where you
can have it all Like the “antique” toys presented in this book, contemporary toys
are mass produced, but with a vengeance molded of plastic and machine
assembled with push button electronics. They celebrate materialistic, aggressive
even death-dealing vices, not virtues. They have little resemblance to
“reality”. Or do they? Childhood in America today is very different from childhoods of the
past and it can be no surprise that today’s childrens’
toys (like their clothes, music, mores, study and recreational activities)
are also very different; there is no limit to what they may imagine in fact.
Literally anything is possible for them to do materially, or, we are told,
soon will be possible. Nor can we be further surprised that their energies
are little attuned to the past but to the possibilities, even the
probabilities, of their attaining(happily or unhappily) whatever unknowable
place the world is headed towards. For the most part charmless, many of today’s toys are, however,
admittedly fascinating. The way, for instance, they can be transformed form
on thing to another- a robot into a rocket into a (whatever) – as it young
owner figures out problems in commuting from earth to Mars to Venus to… (it’s
too exhausting to think about) Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, and Wilma, they were the astronauts that
we parents and grandparents knew. They were cartoon characters. They weren’t
real. Today’s toys are imaginary too, but they are not, I think, without
“reality” – a different kind of reality, one that is amorphous, uninstitutionalized, tentative as well as aggressive
(there is very little humor in today’s toys), a psychic reflection of the
world more than a literal one. Non on, least of all myself, can know the good or bad effect of today’s
inorganic “fantasy” toys on children’s attitude to life, toys that do not
have pasts and futures to hope for but seem only to have a self-satisfied,
superficial and essentially hedonistic, ugly present. What is difficult to
imagine is that there will be many children thirty years from how who will
look at their toys of childhood with the same merited admiration that we
parents and grandparents hold for the toys portrayed in this book. With
barely muted alarm we try not to think that such toys may in fact suggest our
progeny’s futures. It will not, however, be for us to know. What we do know
is that toys not only reflect their
era but have from the late nineteenth century on become harbingers of the
ever new world of tomorrow. We’ll cross our fingers.” Toys as Visual and Material Culture Chair: Amy F. Ogata, Bard Graduate Center Toy Making in Postwar
Czechoslovakia: The Work of Play in a Worker's State Cathleen M. Giustino, Auburn University
Beyond Barbie: Defining and
Designing "Feminist" Toys in the 1970s United States Rob Goldberg, University of Pennsylvania "The Soul of the Toy": The
Toy in Recent Art David Hopkins, University of Glasgow January
06, 2011 Aram Bartholl playful, poignant
works commenting on contemporary digital culture |
