Author Description

Can there be a transdisciplinary practice and theory of prompts? Transobjects: Play, Prompts, and Creative Practice explores the use of play and prompts in creative and cognitive process, and in the classroom. The book is especially intended for designers, artists, writers, and teachers. The first chapter explores the universal importance of play and its historical timeliness in the present moment, followed by a creative-practice and pedagogical how-to manual (interwoven with prompts throughout) designed to be stolen. The book ends with a chapter on maximalism as an aesthetic and a philosophy; and a chapter on how to make the kinds of things named in the book's title. A radical design by book designer Jamison Lung includes surprising visual pleasures on every page; this design is only available in the paperback (not in the e-book version). For a longish sample from the book, please visit iralivingston.com. (This book is part of a set of four books by Ira Livingston published by Poetics Lab in 2024. The set is also available on Amazon-- at a discount-- under the title Poetics Lab Book Set and includes a colorful slipcase that conjures up a secret message hidden in the titles.) Reviewers have described Ira Livingston's previous books as “lucid, playful, and reader-friendly,” “exhilarating and moving,” and “high-level discursive performance art full of conceptual kicks.” Livingston trained first as a visual artist and then in poetics, cultural theory and the study of complex systems. He is Professor of Humanities and Media Studies at Pratt Institute of Art and Design in Brooklyn, New York.