A widescreen frame in cinema beckons the eye to playfully, creatively roam. Such technology also gives inventive filmmakers room to disrupt and redirect audience expectations, surprising viewers through the use of a wider, more expansive screen. Playful Frames: Styles of Widescreen Cinema studies the poetics of the auteur-driven widescreen image, offering nimble, expansive analyses of the work of four distinctive filmmakers – Jean Negulesco, Blake Edwards, Robert Altman, and John Carpenter – who creatively inhabited the nooks and crannies of widescreen moviemaking during the final decades of the twentieth century. Exploring the relationship between aspect ratio and subject matter, Playful Frames shows how directors make puckish use of widescreen technology. All four of these distinctive filmmakers reimagined popular genres (such as melodrama, slapstick comedy, film noir, science fiction, and horror cinema) through their use of the wide frame, and each brings a range of intermedial interests (painting, performance, and music) to their use of the widescreen image. This study looks specifically at the technological underpinnings, aesthetic shapes, and interpretive implications of these four directors’ creative use of widescreen, offering a way to reconsider the way wide imagery still has the potential to amaze and move us today.

This book is a sociolinguistic study of children’s talk and how they interact with one another and their teachers in multilingual, multicultural and multiethnic schools. It is based on tape recordings and ethnographic observations of majority Greek and minority Turkish-speaking children at an Athens primary school. It offers the reader a unique look into the ways in which children draw upon their rich interactional histories and share, transform and recontextualize linguistic and other semiotic resources in circulation to construct play frames and explore, adopt, resist available as well as novel social roles and identities. Drawing on ethnographically informed approaches to discourse, the book shows the ways in which verbal phenomena such as teasing, joking, language play, music making and chanting can provide a productive locus for the study of the negotiation of social identities and roles at school. This book will be of interest to scholars, researchers and students of sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, cultural studies, and multicultural education. It will also be of interest to anthropologists and sociologists.

Online Gaming and Playful Organization explores the cultural impact of gaming on organizations. While gaming is typically a form of entertainment, this book argues that gaming communities can function as a useful analogue for work organizations because both are comprised of diverse members who must communicate and collaborate to solve complex problems. By examining the impact of gaming beyond its own context, this book argues that one can apply numerous lessons from the virtual world of online games to the “real” world of businesses, schools, and other professional communities. Most notably, it articulates the concept of playful organizations, defined as organizations in which the ability to play has become so institutionalized that it is spontaneous, creative, and enjoyable. Based on original research, Online Gaming and Playful Organization establishes an interdisciplinary framework for further conceptual and empirical investigation into this topic, with the dual goals of a better understanding of the role of online games and virtual worlds, and of the possible structural and cultural transformation of public and private organizations.

This is the first book to deal exclusively with ludic interactions with classical antiquity – an understudied research area within classical reception studies – that can shed light on current processes of construction and appropriation of the Greco-Roman world. Classical antiquity has, for many years, been sold as a product and consumed in a wide variety of forms of entertainment. As a result, games, playing and playful experiences are a privileged space for the reception of antiquity. Through the medium of games, players, performers and audiences are put into direct contact with the classical past, and encouraged to experience it in a participative, creative and subjective fashion. The chapters in this volume, written by scholars and practitioners, cover a variety of topics and cultural artefacts including toys, board games and video games, as well as immersive experiences such as museums, theme parks and toga parties. The contributors tackle contemporary ludic practices and several papers establish a dialogue between artists and scholars, contrasting and harmonising their different approaches to the role of playfulness. Other chapters explore the educational potential of these manifestations, or their mediating role in shaping our conceptions of ancient Greece and Rome. Altogether, this edited collection is the first to offer a comprehensive overview of the ways we can play with antiquity.

This volume understands itself as an invitation to follow a fundamental shift in perspective, away from the self-contained ‘I’ of Western conventions, and towards a relational self, where development and change are contingent on otherness. In the framework of ‘Dialogical Self Theory’ (Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2010; Hermans & Gieser, 2012), it is precisely the forms of interaction and exchange with others and with the world that determine the course of the self’s development. The volume hence addresses dialogical processes in human interaction from a psychological perspective, bringing together previously separate theoretical traditions about the ‘self’ and about ‘dialogue’ within the innovative framework of Dialogical Self Theory. The book is devoted to developmental questions, and so broaches one of the more difficult and challenging topics for models of a pluralist self: the question of how the dynamics of multiplicity emerge and change over time. This question is explored by addressing ontogenetic questions, directed at the emergence of the dialogical self in early infancy, as well as microgenetic questions, addressed to later developmental dynamics in adulthood. Additionally, development and change in a range of culture-specific settings and practices is also examined, including the practices of mothering, of migration and cross-cultural assimilation, and of ‘doing psychotherapy’.

Dive deep into the captivating world of emojis with Expressive Emojis: Adding Playful Expressions with HTML, CSS & JS—the essential guide for developers, whether you're just starting or already have experience in web development. This comprehensive eBook offers an in-depth exploration of the creative and technical possibilities of using emojis to enrich your web projects. From the origins of Unicode and the evolution of emojis in modern communication to advanced styling and interaction techniques, this guide equips you with the knowledge and skills to boost user engagement through playful expressions. You'll start by learning how to seamlessly integrate emojis into HTML, tapping into essential libraries that make the process easy and efficient. From there, you'll dive into advanced CSS techniques to customize and style emojis to fit your project's theme. The guide will then take you through the exciting world of JavaScript and the Canvas API, where you'll learn how to animate emojis, creating visually dynamic and interactive web elements. Whether it's simple hover effects or complex animations, you'll master it all. But that's not all—this guide also covers important aspects like dynamic resizing and responsive design to ensure that your emoji applications look and function perfectly across all screen sizes, from mobile to desktop. You'll learn how to apply flexible design techniques to make sure your emojis maintain their quality and appeal, no matter the device. As you progress, you'll dive deeper into specialized sections on emoji design principles and user analytics. Discover how emojis impact user behavior and explore tools to measure and optimize user engagement in your web projects. Additionally, you'll uncover vital insights on the security and privacy considerations needed when working with emojis, ensuring your applications are safe and compliant with modern standards. The eBook also offers a unique and engaging way to test your newfound knowledge with an interactive emoji riddle game. In this section, you'll learn how to design, build, and deploy your own web-based game, utilizing modern development tools and platforms like Vercel to make it accessible and scalable in the cloud. Whether you're developing a fun personal project or creating an interactive feature for your professional portfolio, this guide has you covered. In addition to the technical know-how, Expressive Emojis also delves into the fascinating psychological aspects of emojis. Understand how emojis affect user communication, why they've become such a powerful tool in digital interaction, and how to harness this understanding to craft meaningful, visually engaging experiences. Whether your goal is to level up your web development skills, create more engaging content, or simply expand your creative toolkit, Expressive Emojis: Adding Playful Expressions with HTML, CSS & JS is your go-to resource. Packed with technical expertise, creative insights, and hands-on projects, this eBook provides everything you need to transform ordinary web pages into interactive, emoji-driven experiences.

The principal aim of this book is to discuss the role of video games in socialization of children and young people. The development of video games is a sign of and a factor in the democratization of modern societies.

Janet Maybin investigates how 10-12 year-olds use talk and literacy to construct knowledge about their social worlds and themselves. She shows how children use collaborative verbal strategies, stories of personal experience and the reworked voices of others to investigate the moral order and forge their own identities.

Playful Wisdom examines how Henry David Thoreau’s thinking about religious “play” created a theological legacy in American literature—one that includes Emily Dickinson, Jack Kerouac, Thomas Merton, Annie Dillard, and Marilynne Robinson. Although these writers differ in many ways, they share with Thoreau an improvisational “looseness” or “mobility” in their thinking about the sacred, a sense that religious experience unsettles fixed belief and alters the very shape of the perceiving self. From this perspective, Robert Leigh Davis argues, unswerving orthodoxy is not as crucial to a life of faith as a light-handed responsiveness of spirit that constantly revises fixed assumptions in light of new experiences. Dickinson describes this responsiveness as “nimble believing” and Thoreau calls it “holy play.” Scholars of literature, religion, and philosophy will find this book particularly useful.

Modern precuts meet classic quilt blocks in this guide featuring 15 patterns by the popular quilt designer and author of the Jedi Craft Girl blog. Designer Amanda Niederhauser lets you into the creative process with quilt blocks that you can mix, match and customize with your own personal touch. Playful Precut Quilts features 15 different 12” blocks in an engaging variety of settings and sizes. You can make a sweet sampler quilt with all 15 blocks or repeat motifs for endless variations. Wherever you are on your quilt journey, these precut-friendly patterns make it a breeze to mix colors and prints. With designs that will appeal to every quilter, this book will quickly become your “go to” when you want to make a table runner for your friend’s birthday, a baby quilt for your newborn niece, or a throw for your parents’ anniversary.