I listened recently to Krista Tippett interview Katy Payne on her “On Being” podcast entitled “In the presence of Elephants and Whales” (recorded in 2007). Katy Payne is an acoustic biologist.
She told the story of how she sensed there was a sound even though she could not hear anything, when visiting some elephants and their new babies at a zoo. She suspected that they were communicating, but out of range for humans to hear. She asked some friends with technology able to register infrasound to come - and they discovered that the elephants were indeed communicating with each other in a lower pitch than what is possible for humans to pick up - just as bats can make unheard noises at the other end of the human range of hearing.
I liked this idea of infrasound - sound that is there but beyond our human capacity to hear, and it made me think of play, and how that maybe there is play that children engage in that is beyond the ability of adults to notice?
Then I looked up to understand exactly what infra means - it is a suffix that means below/underneath, which I didn’t like at first being connected to play - that it is “below” gave me a feeling of hierarchy and I just didn’t want to write infraplay if it meant that play was underneath the learning. So I thought, what is the opposite suffix? It turns out to be supra - meaning above or beyond. And I liked the idea that supraplay could mean beyond the capacity of adults. But infraplay kept calling me back..
Infrastructure, for instance, is defined as the basic physical systems of a business, region, or nation and often involves the production of public goods or production processes. Examples of infrastructure include transportation systems, communication networks, sewage, water, and school systems. A city is a made up of physical structures, but it is the infrastructure that brings it to life and makes it work.
But this is not exactly what I mean by infraplay.
What I am suggesting is that often children are at play and the activity is not sensed as play by others, usually adults, but also other children. I was talking with Juliet Robertson earlier this month as part of my research for a book I am writing about play where I am writing from the perspective that play is a sense of being rather than doing.
Juliet described child A and child B where child A hit child B as part of their play - it was not done with malice, but with a curiosity and drive to find out what happens if I do this. Child B did not receive the hit as a cue to play, and was hurt and upset by the action. This was not play for child B or perceived that child A was playing.
I think this is when it becomes important for us as adults to understand the infraplay (and yes I have made up the word - the only other reference I can find is for some computer game and then it is with a capital “I” as a name). If we are open to the possibility of there being play beyond our usual range of noticing play, it might enable us to respond more sensitively to the situation for both child A and B.
As Katy Payne said in the podcast, when asked about why she thought she was able to notice the elephants communicating in infrasound - she responded
“I never really grew up. I think that children are aware of all kinds of things that they close themselves off for when they grow up. In that week when I was sitting in the zoo, I was just a child again, and all the possibilities were open to me, and this one - there it was.”
The infrasonic calls by the elephants went unnoticed by humans until Katy Payne’s discovery - previously some elephant handlers thought that elephants had a kind of extra sensory perception and were reading each other’s minds. So they were noticing that the elephants were communicating but they did not have Katy’s knowledge of infrasound that she had gained from multiple decades of working with whales and their songs in order to consider they were actually making noises.
Maybe we, as adults, need to be open to our inner-child to reconnect to noticing the infraplay? Or at least not be in a hurry to judge actions before considering whether this could be play beyond our own normative understanding of play.
Infrasound can affect us physically regardless of our inability to hear it or notice it. And I suggest that play can affect us too in a similar way - in that I can enter a room and sense an atmosphere of flow - or, sadly, a sense of unease, stress or anxiety.
Yesterday I visited the Universeum museum in Gothenburg and in the area on reptiles there was a contraption that was vibrating with the sign saying, “listen like a snake”. We had to put our chin on the metal, and lo and behold the vibrations turned into words - bone conducted sound. I listened to the English, the Swedish and the music. The music was extremely uncomfortable as my eardrums vibrated in a way I have never experienced before - I quickly moved my chin off.
But it did make me think that we need to keep looking for new ways to listen so that we can notice the infraplay -
the play that is often not noticed ( think infrasound (not heard), infrared (not seen))
the play that is the basic physical and organisational structures, processes and actions needed for well-being, cognitive/social/physical/emotional/spiritual development and connection with the world human and more than human (think infrastructure)