pong.mythos – Ein Ursprungsmythos und seine Geschichte

In "ratio agendi# 3”, PONG / Teletennis is the matrix of an interactive setting. On the game level, two players can interact physically, albeit without contact, in real space. A video beamer projects the minimalist screen display of Pong onto the floor of the exhibition room. The projected field is monitored by a motion tracking system. A stylised tennis umpire chair is installed on the edge of the court, alongside a flat screen displaying the score. The abstract simplicity of the interface and the sound and the limited movements of the two bars1 representing the actors, that can only be moved on one axis, constitute the physical court on which the two people can play with/against each other as if on a tennis court. In this only supposed re-transformation of the game of tennis, the players’ physical movement is subject to the rules of the historical video game.
The extension of the classic game into real space, made possible with the aid of contemporary technology, allows the players to use two dimensional axes by retaining the reduced look of the game based on the chip technology of the nineteen-seventies: the axis marked by bar as a three-dimensional divider of the rackets/player reference, and the axis of the real player in three-dimensional space.