WHAT
Mixtum is a creative tool for randomly selecting a trio of symbols to help generate unexpected ideas. There are a potential of 32,768 different trios that can be chanced upon.
HISTORY
Mixtum began as a laboratory tool for preschool children to create new futures through synthesizing disconnected ideas and objects. A central idea of futures oriented education is to help people create their own alternatives to the dominant view of the future. This process requires creativity, inventive questioning, and considering diverse possibilities. Mixtum prompts players to exercise these skills, which are applicable not only for preschool children but to students and practitioners of art, writing, movement, music and anyone else interested in the fringes of human imagination.
SYNTHESIS & QUESTIONING
Mixtum is intended to emphasize and strengthen our ability for flexible synthesis. With a spin of the wheel a player is given two or three random (or unconnected) symbols/objects/ideas that had to find a way to come together into one new thing, verbally or visually. For example, if one was given the two symbols house and nose, they could synthesize it into a “home for a booger” or “a nose that blows out windows” or a “house in the shape of a nose.” What are the benefits to these somewhat silly phrases or surrealist thinking practices? We like to consider it as a platform for serious new kinds of questions: “What would a house look like that was shaped like a nose?” “How can we think of our nose as a home?” “Is a home a filter of dirt, too?” By using the process of Mixtum, we refresh the abundance and possibility present in our everyday experience of ideas and objects.
THE ART OF COMBINING
Mixtum comes from the latin term mixtum compositum. Siegfried Zeilinksi describes the concept in his book Deep Time of the Media: Toward an Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technical Means
CHANCE OPERATIONS
Mixtum falls into a long line of tools that utilize the truth and magic of chance operations to create fruitful outcomes. Mixtum is a practice that promotes the necessity of chance in play, and also the openness that comes from accepting chance intentions as an integral structural element of reality. Play real in chance times.
MYTH & STORY
Along with an eye toward the future, Mixtum is a tool for engaging players with deep archetypal imagery and innate symbols. Creating a means by which the language of symbolism, and the importance of myth creation and literacy, can be discussed without becoming too rooted in intellectual logic, or new-age intuition alone (though both are encouraged in the Mixtum process). Starting with personal connotations, players are led on their own journeys towards the universal aspects of our symbolic histories. For a great reference tool to accompany Mixtum, we suggest, The Book Of Symbols: Reflections On Archetypal Images (The Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism)
Think you are ready to learn How to Play?
Or, listen to and learn how to use Mixtum sounds!
MEET THE DESIGNERS
Mixtum was created and illustrated by artist/educator/research team of Heidi Gustafson and Yutaka Houlette.
Heidi Gustafson lives in Baltimore, MD and runs Early Futures, an online resource/research site on edge thinking in early childhood education. She teaches Pre-K at Bolton Hill Nursery School, directed the experimental Children’s Think Tank (a research group run for and by children).
Yutaka Houlette is a freelance illustrator, teacher and musician who also lives in Baltimore, MD. He previously ran the art program at the Baltimore International Charter School and currently teaches Pre-K, and heads up curriculum development, at Bolton Hill Nursery School.
