ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors contribute to the developments by exploring what can be gained by bringing a baroque sensibility to their thinking with and about virtual play. In developing a theme from a previous study, they show how this baroque sensibility, by recognizing and interrogating multiplicity, allows us to illuminate and explore how different interests and engagements intersect during virtual play. The authors illustrate the perspective using an episode from a collaborative study with Michelle Neumann in which they observed children’s uses of iPads in an early years setting. In many ways the baroque — with its lavishness and excess — seems a world apart from virtual play in the early years. Most often associated with art, music and architecture that countered the rationality of the Reformation, the baroque manifests in rich, ebullient, luxurious creations that make their impact through a “sensuous materiality” rather than reasoned argument.
