Games Convention part I – pong.mythos

Topong1.jpgTopong3.JPG

From 24.8-27.8.2006 there is the socalled Games Convention (GC) in the City of Leipzig. The games convention is – next to the Tokyo Game Show and the E3 (which got small this year) – the biggest fair for computer games in the world. For this years fair there have been already now more than 150 000 visitors. Part of the GC was the exhibition pong.mythos, which was generously placed right behing the XBox 360s booth. pong.mythos is an exhibition around the game pong, which serves as a central example in the development of computer games. daytars ToPong has an extra stand at the pong.mythos exhibition (see image above) and we hope that all 170 000 visitors or so come to play! :=0.


BBCI.JPG

ToPong is situated in the pong.science section right next to the other Berlin science pong which is a pong game by the Berlin Brain-Computer Interface (BBCI). The BBCI is a collaboration between the Fraunhofer institute FIRST and the Department for Neurology at the Charité. It is a project which investigates direct human-computer interaction, by using cerebral electric activity for steering a computer. So it is possible to play pong just with your brain via an EEG. In the exhibition the experiment was however demonstrated with a display dummy, since the calibration alone takes already half an hour.

mythos.JPG

history.JPG

The history of pong (inventor Ralph H. Baer is patron of pong.mythos)

Besides the science part pong.mythos had a pong.history, pong.art and finally a category for the rest- a pong.pop section. I had not enough batteries with me so I couldn’t take tons of pictures and hence some pictures which didn’t come out good enough are lost for this blog. In particular I have no image of the pingK pong stand, which I find a pity. I have also no images of the old consoles in the history section. Also others were lost or forgotten and so here comes a random collection of images from the pong exhibition:

pongspieler.JPG

Trying out pong

pongmechanik.JPG

Pongmechanik by Niklas Roy

valieexport24.JPG

Valie Export: Ping Pong Ein Spielfilm-ein Film zum Spielen

sonicpong32.JPG

Having fun with sonic pong by Andrew Milmoe

spieler.JPG

TFTtennis38.JPG

Dirk Eijsbouts Tft Tennis v180°

redeyes.JPG

Red eyes from red LED’s: the 3D Borg from “Das Labor”

painstation.JPG

the pain station from //////////fur////

powerpong31.JPG

power pong by Mathilde muP

campingpong36.JPG

Camping pong by Noel Nissen

LittleLights.JPG

Little lights from Blinkenlights by Stephan Kambor

kiiakallio32.JPG

Mixed Reality Pong by Kiia Kallio

Minipong.JPG

Minipong by Josh Nimoy

legopong.JPG

lego pong

gottschalk.JPG

Germanys popular entertainer Thomas Gottschalk in a 70s TV show playing Telepong.

All exhibition items are described on the homepage of the official pong.mythos website and in the excellent catalog which comes with the exhibition.

All images in this post about pong.mythos are from me and can be used under a creative commons license.

4 Responses to “Games Convention part I – pong.mythos”

  1. Victor Says:

    Why only show ToPong? EgoPong as also fönny sides.

  2. Victor Says:

    btw I forgot to mention: ToPong can’t be downloaded, its corrupt.

  3. nad Says:

    Victor wrote:

    btw I forgot to mention: ToPong can’t be downloaded, its corrupt.

    Thanks for letting us know. We will look into that. We didn’t change anything at ToPong. There were some problems with jReality or more precisely with jogl (which is used by jReality) due to Oracles sudden decision to stop signing certain jars, moreover some applets/webstarts are hosted at the TU Berlin, since Tim used them as example applications for jreality or the vizualization of math, and the TU restructed their websites, so that some TU sites sort of dissappeared. These two things may be possible causes why ToPong and other applets/webstarts on the daytar/art site seem to be corrupt.

  4. kikimaus Says:

    ToPong is situated in the pong.science section right next to the other Berlin science pong which is a pong game by the Berlin Brain-Computer Interface (BBCI).

    Have you seen that
    Facebook is developing a ‘mind control’ brain interface?:

    ‘We’re building further out beyond augmented reality, and that includes work around direct brain interfaces that one day will let you communicate using only your mind, although that stuff is pretty far out,’ he said.

Leave a Reply


The below box is for leaving comments. Interesting comments in german, french and russian will eventually be translated into english. If you write a comment you consent to our data protection practices as specified here. If your comment text is not too rude and if your URL is not clearly SPAM then both will be published after moderation. Your email adress will not be published. Moderation is done by hand and might take up to a couple of days.
you can use LaTeX in your math comments, by using the [latex] shortcode:
[latex] E = m c^2 [/latex]