Homo Ludens: we are playful animals.

“Play is a uniquely adaptive act, not subordinate to some other adaptive act, but with a special function of its own in human experience”. Johan Huizinga, dutch historian, author of “Homo Ludens” and one of the founders of modern cultural history. *(Picture: woman with hula hoop in 1972).

Futures Thinking: tomorrow can be designed today.

We humans spend a great deal of time thinking about the future and analysing the past in order to act effectively according to our purposes… In 1985 Endel Tulving was the first cognitive neuroscientist to use the term “mental time travel” to describe the human capacity to imagine personal events from the past, as well as […]

A philosophical look into Virtual Reality.

In 1993, during a trip to New York City, I was lucky enough to try a Virtual Reality Game (see photo below)… Although the video game of this vintage system was a bit disappointing, I felt a futuristic experience that really left an indelible mark on my subconscious since over the years I have once again […]

Abstract art as an emancipatory activity.

According to the definition published in Tate Modern’s website “Abstract Art” is often seen as carrying a moral dimension, in that it can be seen to stand for virtues such as order, purity, simplicity and spirituality. As art historian and MoMA director Alfred H. Barr Jr. wrote in the preface to the catalogue “Cubism and Abstract […]

Skateboarding as therapy.

“Push To Heal” verbally articulates and visually demonstrates the connections between skateboarding and neuroscience, and highlights skateboarding as an activity that can heal the human brain from past trauma. This short film, made in association with Hull Services and the ChildTrauma Academy, provides a snapshot of how and why skateboarding should be viewed as a […]

Conscious mental life is the making of memories.

“Conscious mental life is based entirely on the making of memories. It is a constant review of stories that were lived in the past and possible stories that have been invented for the future. By necessity, most of them adjust to the current real world in the best way that our senses can process them, […]

14 useful UX design facts.

The field of User Experience Design (UXD) is a conceptual discipline focused on the interaction between human users, technology, and their contextual environments. The most imperative attribute that a UX designer can exude is the art of understanding people in general, and users in particular. Sounds relatively simple, right? Except that, it’s not. Every user […]

Neuroscience backed advertising.

Modern advertising originated with the techniques introduced with tobacco promotion in the 1920s, most significantly with the campaigns of Edward Bernays who was Sigmund Freud‘s nephew. Advertising is a marketing communication that employs an openly sponsored, non-personal message to promote or sell a product, service or idea which is communicated through various mass media (newspapers, […]

Skateboarding as an Aesthetic Experience.

Some months ago I posted in this blog an abstract with my proposal, which develops around embodied cognition and skateboarding, for this year’s Pushing Boarders event in Sweden… The organizers were looking for academic research in the fields of architecture and sociology related to different aspects of skateboarding, so I thought that a mix of cognitive […]

Art for an ecological revolution!

When I was a child I developed a strong love for nature while reading my father’s old biology books from his school period during fascist dictatorship in Spain and after spending countless hours during the weekends in my grandparents country house in the basque mountains. As I grew older and started thinking about a college degree, my […]