When Jillian and I were sitting down to come up with an idea for this hack, everything I suggested seemed to be related to something I’d done at Davidson. The final idea we landed on, recreating an Etch-a-Sketch, was inspired by and interaction I had with an elderly woman at an antique store I was visiting for a photo ethnography project. I was focused on discovering why people go to antique stores. What is it about old things, especially racist old things (I.e a cotton scale or a black mammy) that attract people? I found that for most people, nostalgia drew them to the antique store. There’s a human tendency to want everybody in the future carry on the same traditions and activities you had in life.
The elderly woman saw me looking at a stack of Etch-a-Sketches and said, “You know, if you shake that then it erases.” I said, “I forgot about that!” I told her that I never owned a real Etch-a-Sketch, but I played with some at friends’ houses when I was a child. She said that she played with them as a kid, and she got her children Etch-a-Sketches when they grew up. She said there’s probably not many kids now who have one.
Thus, this hack is a twist on an old toy that probably nobody plays with anymore. By choosing Microsoft Paint as a vehicle for the Etch-a-Sketch drawing screen, I seek to remediate a very old technology with a much newer one to show that it is alright if something I loved and valued as a child isn’t loved and valued by every child now. There are still engaging ways to pass on generational artifacts to young kids. Even when it comes to play things, technology keeps moving on and coming up with more enticing toys. Luckily, there are still ways to bring “lost” artifacts to life, like this Makey-Makey version of a classic toy.
The Etch-a-Sketch is also a strange toy in relation to Caillois’ four categories of play: âgon (competition), alea (chance), mimicry, and illinx (vertigo). I truly don’t believe it fits into any of those categories, but I do believe it can create a magical, unreal space for kids who play with it. The possibilities of what to draw and what to do with that drawing are literally endless. A railroad track for your toy train. A board game map. An abstract drawing. The Etch-a-Sketch challenges many of Caillois’ and Huizinga’s ideas of play, but is still clearly an object dedicated to play. I can always find a hole in an argument I’m reading, and the remediated Etch-a-Sketch hack felt like the perfect signifier of that.
