Concept

 

Project Blinkenlights, Blinkenlights, 2001
Valie Export, Ping Pong, 1968, Courtesy: Sammlung Generali Foundation, Wien, Werner Kaligofsky
Odyssey, 1972, Courtesy: Computerspiele Museum, Berlin, Photo: Michael Panckow
Niklas Roy, Pongmechanik, 2004; Photo: Niklas Roy

pong game

The exhibition shows the technical and social historical circumstances under which Pong managed to become a key influencing factor for the emergence of a whole industry. Foremost, this is the story of two business men and inventors who, independently and with different approaches, invented video games as a commercial pastime. One is Ralph H. Baer (born 1922 in Germany), who was the first to create a playing field out of the domestic television set. As early as 1968, he submitted a simple tennis game as a patent which in 1972 formed the base for the first home video game, Odyssey. The other is Nolan Bushnell (born 1943 in the United States), who founded the first pure video games company Atari in 1972 to produce his adaptation of the simple tennis game as the Pong machine. This is why Pong is such an interesting pop-cultural phenomenon: Because it is located – technically as well as historically – at the interface between the analogue and the digital world. With the Odyssey console this becomes especially apparent, as its digital circuits were still realised with common analogue parts, and it was shipped with coloured overlays for putting on the tv screen to colorise the black-and-white game events. But Pong is also one of the first digital mass products (most of all, the development represents Atari’s Pong, successfully sold since 1975 as a microchip-based home version). As such the game was a key factor contributing to the growth of the early micro chip industry.

pong art

Two white bars on a black background, a little square in between. The screen as the playing field. It seems to be the minimalism in aesthetics and game mechanics that has been challenging artists again and again to indulge themselves in the Pong myth. Through its simplicity, Pong can be easily transposed into different contexts / genres. Consequently, the exhibition collects works from the fields of installation, video, software, performance, and fine arts. Another factor is the huge popularity of Pong, which makes it appear almost like a synonym for video games. This literally mythical level of popularity all but invites artists to indulge themselves in it, adding new facets in the process. Almost all exhibited works of art have been created in recent years and display a conscious discussion of the Pong principle. Each artist has an individual approach, picking up a different facet of the myth to integrate it in the context of his or her work. It is not a big surprise that nearly all works explore the human-machine interface, since this is part of the unique essence of the Pong myth, being the first mass-distributed application that enabled literally everyone to interact with digital technology. For this reason, pong.mythos focuses on the current situation of man in a digital society as well. Where are we today, and how did we get there? The question of human-machine connections in the future is also asked by many artists, often leading to original answers.

pong science

Game theories become increasingly influential in theoretical science. But in experimental research, too, gaming situations are traditional test arrangements. They have to be simple and clear. Hence, it is not surprising that Pong is used as an experimental environment for research into new interfaces (e.g. mind-controlled processes).The exhibition presents projects and concrete works to demonstrate how the fields of games, art, and science continue to interconnect and how traditional borders between them are being blurred.

 

 

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