← A. Inventions, No. 38
Martin Barclay IV (1925–2006)
pH! The Soil Chemistry Game
1968
The Martin Barclay Company, est. 1860, Springfield, Massachusetts. Polystyrene and acrylic, circuit board of phenolic paper, copper foil, silicon, and ceramic barium titanate. 16 × 16 × 1¾". Collection of the author.
Growing up, the kids next door had parents who took an aggressive interest in educational play. Some of the games I remember from their house were:
(fig. 1) pH! The original soil chemistry game
(fig. 2) psyche: An exciting journey into a child’s id
(fig. 3) spice trade: Did not license the characters from Frank Herbert’s Dune
(fig. 4) memento mori: A mystical voyage to the great beyond, somehow at once dull and ghoulish
(fig. 5) enterprise: Grow a business until it’s too difficult to manage
(fig. 6) supremo: Allegedly an Ivy League favorite, but not really; irresistible to parents of grade schoolers
(fig. 7) four virtues: The game of Chiang Kai-Shek
(fig. 8) octalo: Introduce your kids to the fun of counting in base-8
Published January 17, 2023. Copyright © 2023 Jonathan Hoefler.
About
The objects in the Apocryphal Inventions series are technical chimeras, intentional misdirections coaxed from the generative AI platform Midjourney. Instead of iterating on the system’s early drafts to create ever more accurate renderings of real-world objects, creator Jonathan Hoefler subverted the system to refine and intensify its most intriguing misunderstandings, pushing the software to create beguiling, aestheticized nonsense. Some images have been retouched to make them more plausible; others have been left intact, appearing exactly as generated by the software. The accompanying descriptions, written by the author, offer fictitious backstories rooted in historical fact, which suggest how each of these inventions might have come to be.
These images represent some of AI’s most intriguing answers to confounding questions, an inversion of the more pressing debate in which it is humanity that must confront the difficult and existential questions posed by artificial intelligence.
Previously:
No. 37. Elam’s Ending-State Energy System
Next:
No. 39. Stereoscopic Printing Presses
