Philosophical toys are objects that enable us to understand processes, functions, relations and effects. In contrast to models – that are designed for quite similar purposes, but with a focus on visualization and objectification – philosophical toys are more closely related to processes of active research, experiment and knowledge production. Rather than being products, they are instruments of imagination, insight and invention – tools for thinking by doing, for a synthesis of theory and/as practice, and of practice and/as theory.
There are considerably many ways to conceive, construct, and create philosophical toys, to transfer them from metaverse(s) to thingiverse(s) – and back again. However, for this session, I invite you to a cruise on the planks of Dr. Faustroll’s copper boat, and to collect some of these very special non-machines in order to toy with them on our playground of perspectives.
Verena Kuni is a scholar in the field of art, culture and media studies, and a professor of visual culture studies at Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main. Among her passions is the development of inter- and transdisciplinary projects and programs at the intersections of theory and practice. Her research and teaching, projects and publications focus on transfers between material and media cultures; media of imagination; technologies of transformation; DIY and critical making; toys and/as tools; workshops, toolboxes, and kits for inventive methods and methodologies; creative entanglements between imagination and invention, (in)visibilities and (im)materials; visual epistemologies and (con)figurations of knowledge; biotopes, biotopias, and technonaturecultures; alternate realities; and (trans)formations of time.