Study 1 Kludge and the Psychology of Play

During the analysis of footage on the experiments on toys and playing with light it became more and more evident that while it is important to present the audience with an activity it is almost equally important to appeal to the less definable aspects of play namely the psychology of play. Over the break I read a few articles and periodicals about the psychology of play some of which were more helpful than others but to my surprise a book I was reading for pleasure Kludge was what was the most impactful of the readings. The book is about the construction of the human mind. Written by Gary Marcus the director of the NYU Infant language learning center the book focus' on the shortcomings of the human mind and more importantly to me why the brain falls for certain tricks.








Gary Marcus author of Kludge









Early in the year I spoke with Mark about the best way to get people to interact with an art piece and his advice was to essentially trick them into letting their guard down and having a meaningful interaction with the piece. In Kludge a large portion of the book is dedicated to the tricks and exploits that we are susceptible to because of the construction of our mind, tricks that advertisers, lawyers and other influential figures know of and use on a regular basis. So in the spirit of repurposing everyday occurrences as is so prevalent in New Media I will be conducting further experiments on the getting the human mind into a play susceptible mindset. Examples of this include the Halo Effect which is a part of the human minds reliance on constant input, color theory and the 'mere familiarity' effect. The Halo Effect is a cognitive hiccup that allows the human mind to be cross contaminated with thoughts from one part seeping into another. For example people without a strong opinion on extreme sports are asked to read and memorize 2 different sets of words. One group is shown words such as caution, danger, injury recklessness and a variety of dummy words to keep the effect from being obvious, while the other group is given words like stimulating, excitement, adrenaline etc. The people who were fed the cautionary words focus on the dangers inherent with extreme sports while the 2nd group focus on the exciting aspects. Color theory provides us with relations the the average human being has with colors and their relations to the world. Finally the mere familiarity effect states that when we are unsure of a solution a familiar solution is generally chosen ever if the familiarity is unrelated to the question. Through further readings and tests I hope to be able to help make playspace the playful space it needs to be. Finally the forays in the intangible elements of play have allowed me to add a 3rd variable to my play algorithm.

CF = CM + SP +PE

Where CF= Total Creative Force CM = Cultural Merit (where the audience values what they are doing) SP= Space Positivity (lack of judgement etc...) and now PE = Psychological Effect(the small psychological stimulants associated and talked about above)