"Thinking the world must entertain you leads to boredom and sloth. Thinking you must entertain the world leads to bright colors, odd clothing, and amazing grace in running for the bus."
Lea Redmond of Leafcutter Designs is entertaining the world with whimsy and purpose. She designed the Artifact Advice cootie catcher I sent Hoja earlier this year.
Once, she made herself a pair of shoes the soles of which imprinted a message when she walked.
She also invents 'projects' - items, activities, or participatory events which serve to inspire creativity and mindfulness. One of her projects is a game she has titled Infinite Possibilities. It is a game, she says, of "Artifact Associations:
"Infinite Possibilities is a non-competitive poetic game in which everyday artifactual detritus is allowed to reveal its marvelous meaningfulness. It is a game of unexpected relationships and associative thinking."
Like indexing or poetry, the players link images to ideas to stories to images -- round and round. Creating one's own copy of the game is straightforward and simple. Redmond provides the instructions and the game rules. What's so cool, and totally in keeping with the freeform approach to the game, is that the player pieces one uses are whatever you want - household finds like a leftover button or an orphan chess piece, items found while walking like an interesting stone or a torn off bus transfer, etc. She even suggests making the game board portable: by sewing it on top of a hat!
