Unboxing Technologies of Play (Fall 2025-Present)

Unboxing Technologies of Play is a project directed by The Studio for Mediating Play to unpack play technologies as situated practices, contested sites, and materialized arrangements of power through which normative structures are reproduced, resisted, and reimagined. Centering toys, games, and other playthings created for and through play, this project traces the material histories, ideological constructs, social relations, and temporal orders that make play technologies possible and that play technologies make possible. In particular, Unboxing Technologies of Play investigates how play technologies mediate technocultural imagineries and political struggles within and beyond the realm of games and play, such as educational debates about children’s development, legal disputes over worker discrimination and exploitation, economic imperatives for technoscientific progress, and ecological concerns about environmental degradation. As disciplinary apparatuses, interpretive frameworks, and worldmaking devices, this project explores technologies of play through the historical exclusions and affirmations as well as ongoing conflicts and compromises that they impart.

AY 2025-2026 Online Scholar/Designer Conversations

“‘I Put a Computer in Her!’: Rewriting the History of (1980s) Computing Through the Lens of Girlhood, Doll Play, and Childcare Practices”
Reem Hilu, Washington University (https://fms.wustl.edu/people/reem-hilu)

“Metaverse Filipino Workers and the Digital ‘Frontier’ of Web3 Gaming”
Huan He, Vanderbilt University (https://as.vanderbilt.edu/english/bio/huan-he/)