SemioNerd

From the Strong with love:
a month at Rochester's museum of Play.

Since November the 16th I have the pleasure of working on my researches in a wonderful and rich environment: The Strong Museum of Play. 

The museum was founded in 1968 by Margaret Woodbury Strong, a prolific collector of everyday objects, especially dolls and toys, and today encompasses almost 10000 m2 of exhibitions, the International Center for the History of Electronic Games, the National Toy Hall of Fame, the Brian Sutton-Smith Library (where I spend most of my time) and Archives of Play, the Woodbury School, the American Journal of Play, and  an awesome (alas not open to the public) warehouse full of toys, boardgames and artifacts, with an uncanny resemblance to the Indiana Jones' warehouse...

The Strong also offers three research fellowships, among which the "The Strong Research Fellowship" which I was honoured to be awarded with. 

The project I'm working on – which will be part of the PhD dissertation – aims at investigating the relationship between toys and meaning, focusing in particular on three different dimensions of the way this artefacts operate in a semiotic level: 

-The intentio auctoris: how toy makers, designers and companies try to and actually convey knowledge, meaning and cultural values through their creations; 

-The intentio lectoris: the semiotics aspects of the actual toy-play, that goes far beyond what the authors have imagined (see Sutton-Smith 1986) and make use of toys as means of self expression (see the works of Winnicott and Erikson) or as instruments to explore the world, both physical and semiotic. 

-The intentio operis: how the physical characteristics of these artefacts are able to influence and direct the way they are used and interpreted (see the works of Latour and Verbeek). 

A meaning-centered approach to toys, combining these three points of view, should be up to the task for an in depth analysis on toy-playto place side by side with those proposed by developmental psychology and social sciences. 

The topic, as some of you may know, isn't completely new to me, but the opportunity of analysing extensively different kinds of toys and toy catalogues, here at The Strong, is being fundamental for the advancement of the research!