Following on from the previous ping pong post…
No space in your house for a games or ping pong table? Then the Ping Pong Door could be for you, turning an existing doorway into an occasional use play space.
Designed by Tobias Fraenzel (originally for a DesignBoom contest) who tells me:
“The PingPong Door is ready to put […]

“Phase is a sound generation system, bringing sound immersion, haptic response movement and visual immersion into play. The proposed musical demonstration (an interactive installation for science and technology museums, theme parks…) has two goals: firstly, to enable users to discover and learn about sound space and music, thanks to their immersion in visual, sound, and […]

I’ve had this post in my draft items since October 2006, now slowly finding time to write on Pixelsumo again. In August 2005 I posted ZXZX, a device by Crispin Jones that you cheat the computer at button tapping games, asking “What does it mean to cheat this unseeing opponent?”
Periborg are a series of […]

The Cube was fictional film in 1997 in which people find they are trapped in a giant cube maze. Each cube room has 6 doors that leds to another room. This interactive architecture is full of sensors and actuators (flame throwsers, spikes etc causing considerable pain), and is essentially playing a game with […]

A visit to Dr.Pong in Berlin back in March reminded me to post these projects that I saw a while ago…taking a game of ping pong and giving it new rules, context and interpretation.
At the Common Wealth exhibition at the Tate Modern in 2003 I saw 3 playful sculptures. Frisbee House by Carsten Holler […]

Following on from my previous post on alternative perspectives, I’m pleased to be able to write about Avatar Machine from Marc Owens (Design Products student at RCA).
“The virtual communities created by online games have provided us with a new medium for social interaction and communication. Avatar Machine is a system which replicates the aesthetics and […]

No reason for this post, other than I love the above two images by Brody Condon (for the fake screenshot competition) in 2003. Read this blog post. I saw this a long long time ago, but forgot to bookmark them, and managed to find it again via selectparks (thanks!).
Brody also created 650 Polygon […]

[Update] here are some photos of the first event.

I am off to Liverpool to take part in the first event in the Future of Sound tour. Owen LLoyd and myself are collaborating on an interactive spatial soundscape, and today I will show the first stage prototype of this. More details about this project in […]

NDSVisuals is a wireless VJ controller using the Nintendo DS. Ndsvisuals utilises the DS features, such as two screens, a touchscreen, wireless networking. The DS is used as an input device to control VVVV patches in realtime.
Watch this video [Quicktime or Windows Media] to see the functions such as:
display and arrange video footage, […]

Last week in London, Philips held an event to preview new potential products ‘that demonstrate its sense and simplicity brand positioning’. Unfortunately I couldn’t make it to the event, but below are a few products that I find interesting. Many of these follow approaches that I have seen from interaction designers and students […]

The 1K Project II is created by an artist called Blackshark (forum member) using the physics based driving game Track Mania. 1000 replays were recorded, then played back merged together using the reply editor. The result is a polished video of flocking swarming cars. Watch here.
Older videos:
The 1k Project I, 3k Project.
(low-res & […]

Machinima is the creation of films using real time game engines, such as Halo, Second Life & The Sims.
Pirate Baby’s Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006 is the opposite of that. It is a film created by Paul Robertson made to look like a video game. As a child with a miss spent youth playing […]

Normalized is a project by Andreas Molgaard (RCA), Mikkel Fredborg and Lasse Cleveland. Normalized is a place for exploration and relaxation. This game like environment has no beginning and end, there are no objectives, simply explore and listen. This synthetic environment was influenced by nature and the outdoors.
The level was constructed of structured […]

[update1 - Jimmi got in touch and has posted his video on YouTube in five parts -> one, two, three, four, five]

I’ve had the pleasure and honor of seeing Toshio Iwai do the keynote lecture at Futuresonic 2006. As an inspiration for many years, having only read about his previous work and seen static images, […]

As a young child I remember playing superhero, running around with my arms extended, or flying like a plane with my arms to the side (well maybe not). Interaction designers can learn alot from child’s play, so its interesting to see a few projects using the arms extended technique.

The appropriately titled I Am More […]

For the Cybersonica conference, we had Josh Randall, Creative Director of Harmonix Music over to do the keynote lecture ‘Interactive Music for the Masses’.
About the talk.

The video documentation is now online thanks to Playstation.com and Cybersonica.tv, highly recommended viewing.
Watch:
Lecture on Playstation.com
Josh gets interviewed by Playstation.com
Also check out this months Edge Magazine (UK) for a run […]

I wrote about q3apd back in July 2005 (link). This version, shown at Lovebytes 2006. As Julian puts it:
The work was presented for two weeks during which the ‘game’ autoplayed continuously - ie there was no human input. Four bots fight each other, dying and respawning, over and over again. One of the four bots […]

Showing at the Cybersonica 06 Sonic Art Exhibition.
Created by Wojceich Kosma, Interchange is an audiovisual piece controlled by the Playstation Portable gaming device. The player performs some composed graph score consisting of 98 boxes. Each box represents a note and a shape. The number inside the box is a pitch/length of loop. The player is […]

Friday, 19th May 2006, 11am-11pm
Saturday, 20th May 2006, 11am-8.30pm
The Science Museum’s Dana Centre, 165 Queens Gate, London SW7 5HE
The full programme has now been announced.
I am looking forward to ‘Interactive Music for the Masses‘, a keynote lecture from Josh Randall (think Guitar Hero).
“Josh Randall will discuss his experience at Harmonix Music, from the company’s origins […]

[update - here is a video]
A commission for the Cybersonica 06 Sonic Art Exhibition. If you are into your sound based game environments, you should get to the exhibition and check it out.

Fijuu2 was created by Julian Oliver (Selectparks) and Steven Pickles. Fijuuu uses a realtime 3D engine allowing players to dynamically manipulate 3D instruments […]

My reason for irregular postings on Pixelsumo has been due to curating and coordinating the Cybersonica 06 Sonic Art exhibition. After a huge amount of work by the team, I can now happily say that the exhibition is now open and we have 12 truly great pieces installed in the gallery space. I […]

We Will Destroy You is a video installation by Chris Evans. Participants play a normal game of space invaders, but hidden inside the arcade cabinet is a video camera, filming their reactions and facial expressions. The video is then projected on the wall of a bar, where customers get the evil destroying stares […]

Previously I have investigated game controllers as musical instruments / inputs (here and here), and creating music with video games here. I am really interested in the re-appropriation of gaming technology and environments for creative exploration in sound.
Harmonix, creators of successful music video games such as Amplitude and Frequency, have released Guitar Hero stateside, […]

Reporting on Dorkbot London 35 (search Dorkbot for previous events). Photos here.
First up was the ever busy Tom Carden. Tom gave a general introduction to Processing, for those who simply didn’t know. He then announced two arrivals to the community: ProcessingHacks (collaboration with toxi) a wiki detailing some of the trickier coding approaches & ProcessingBlogs, […]

Yesterday I attended Friday Late at the V&A Museum. This event is on the last Friday of each month and is centred around a theme or exhibition, the evenings feature live performances, guest DJ’s and often hands-on activities as well as a late bar. This month was hosted by Playstation Portable.

Jason Bruges Studio created […]

Whilst we wait for the PSP release here in England, ps2dev user Shine is developing Lua Player (www.luaplayer.org). This is good news for the homebrew community as it enables beginners to create their own games using the Lua programming language. No need to compile any code, simply edit the text file, drop your […]

I-F-E-A-R (infrasound fear emotion audio reverb) is a project by Jodie Hancock, part of the CoEDD graduate exhibition.
“This project is an exploration of emotion as a physical force and how that force can define an environment, often with more intensity than is defined by the senses. Fear is a dark and physical emotion which lends […]

G-Link by Ross O’Shea is a student project where your real world activities effect your game character. This hip pouch and badge is full of electronics and as you wear it throughout the day, it senses and records data; how many steps you have taken, how much you speak, size, temperature and brightness of […]

UnrealArt is a project by Alison Mealey. These artwork prints are generated by bots in Unreal Tournament.
“Each image represents about 30 mins of gameplay in which the computers AI plays against itself, there are 20-25 bots playing each game. The Bots play custom maps I create. Each map has been pathed so that […]

ZXZX by artist Crispin Jones, is a device designed to play the eighties video game “Track & Field”. ZXZX is also an object for thinking about what it means to outwit the computer. Playing a computer game against an automatic (computer controlled) opponent can still engender feelings of elation at winning, or frustration at […]

Following on from my previous post about the work of Recyclism (Benjamin Gaulon) and my previous posts about game controllers as instruments, I introduce you to The Res (Recycling Entertainment System). 6 NES controllers, midi signals and Max/MSP allow players to jam together. There are 4 videos in the project section of the […]

I am a real fan of appropriated game engines for use in an artistic context, performance and musical composition. This is something you will see me post more of over the coming months. So I was very happy when selectparks reported on Devmap by Workspace Unlimited:
“DEVMAP is a virtual world created with a modification of […]

Thanks to Tom, I have recently been checking out the work of Diogo Terroso. Shown below are images from Natural Interfaces; “Real objects such as tree branches, leafs and sand, function as an interface between the visitors and the art piece. By moving and repositioning the physical objects in space, the visitors initiate the real-time […]

The other way around this time (ref), how could games be controlled by sound and instruments? Instead of then playing those instruments to produce a nice song, they are played to control a game character. Nicolas Nova is also interested in this idea.
David Hindman and Spencer Kiser have created sonictroller, whose goal was “to […]

AvSeq from artist nullpointer is an abstract sound sequencing game. “The player captures and links sound-objects together, various combinations when released activate changes in the audio sequence of the game. In turn the game environment responds visually to the developing audio track. The player can therefore manipulate the progress of the game both aurally and […]

Following on from my research into controllers as instruments I have been looking at artists and programmers that have turned existing game engines info performance and composition environments. If you know of any more, please post a comment and I will post them here.
Vladimir Todorovic over at tadar.game music uses the Unreal engine for this […]

[ just adding old posts from previous Pixelsumo site ]
Fully immerse yourself into a pinball game with the Furminator, created by Fur. Great stuff.