Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Pong Myth

Today I’ve been visiting an exhibition called The Myth of Pong (“Pong.Mythos”) here in Stuttgart. It shows a multitude of Pong variations [WMV].

For example, there’s “King Pong” – Pong re-enacted in real life. The Pain Machine lets you play Pong with one hand while your other hand will be punished when you lose the ball... there are different punishments, like heat, a whip, or electric shock. A bicycle Pong lets you steer your paddle with the bicycle, and you need to push the pedals to give the screen in front of you electricity. Mind Pong illustrates how people analyze brain waves to let you play Pong (there’s only a puppet for this in the exhibition, and you can’t try it out yourself). A ball of light interacts with the vegetables you place on the white surface. There’s also a small version of Blinkenlights, which originally allowed you to play Pong on a Berlin house – using your cellphone to trigger the computer controlled lamps behind the building’s front windows. And then, there was an adult ASCII movie playing...

The exhibition is in Stuttgart (Schlossplatz) until the end of April and then moves on to Leipzig and Bern.

Pong Myth by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (3)

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