Rachel Helps

295 posts

Old-fashioned play structures invite imagination

Playgrounds needn’t all look alike; they can be works of art. This isn’t a new idea either; Pierre Szekely made a few play sculptures in France in the 1950s and 60s that I wouldn’t mind having in my neighborhood. Paige Johnson at Playscapes has collected Szekely’s playground sculptures chronological

This Exquisite Forest has leaves of animations

video The surrealists had a game called The Exquisite Corpse which had players create sentences together without looking at what had been written before. London’s Tate Modern takes the game to the internet, allowing anyone to build on to a short animation made by another. The result: brief, surreal,

Tired of liking things? The new hate app can help.

There is just too much positive thinking on the Internet. Too many “likes” on Facebook and comment threads and not enough room to express disapproval. Not to worry; the upcoming hate app allows you to express your disapproval (assuming it’s not another Internet joke).

Aces dominate our mental images of playing cards.

While playing cards sybolize games of chance, it turns out our preferences for said cards are anything but chance. New research shows we definitely have biases when it comes to remembering and choosing cards: Simply asked to name a card, there was a strong bias for choosing the Ace of Spades, follow

Swings and seesaws make for interactive urban art.

video Sometimes I wish we had more playgrounds for adults besides ski slopes and bike trails. In Minneapolis, Keetra Dean Dixon created a corridor of swings for their arts festival, usable by adults and big kids. Another big-person friendly play structure is a lighted seesaw with programmable resist

Virtual Legos and Lego real estate available via Build

Video Google is doing so many projects that it’s hard to keep track of them all. One you might not have seen is called Build, a place to build with legos on plots of land that are correlated with Google Map plots. You can see your neighbors but unlike Farmville there’s no waiting to tear everything

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