Register Now!

The "Bizarro Game Controllers" studio aims to bring together a dynamic group of artists, researchers, students, designers and hackers to build strange and original game controllers for embodied interaction.

Game controllers are familiar - and fun - pieces of hardware. They're also dead useful. It's quite common for research prototypes to use inexpensive off-the-shelf parts; they are often cheaper and more reliable than custom hardware. However, the appeal of game controllers as a broad prototyping tool goes beyond simply being inexpensive and reliable. Game controllers are specifically engineered to allow people to interact with fast-paced computer games. Thus, they are not only reliable but extremely responsive. This makes them ideal for interaction with dynamic visual art, with music, and for creating tangible interfaces.

Basically, if your bizarro controller can control a videogame, you know it'll be useful for a broader set of interactive applications. We can also virtually guarantee you'll have fun prototyping and testing it.

Goals

Workshop Registration Fee

Expected Preparation

Expected Skills

We will provide, at minimum, a hackable version of the classic video game Pong that can accommodate two players/controllers at a time. If your game controller sends keystrokes, then no extra programming is required. If you want to do a deeper hack, then any Arduino-based controller can be added by changing or writing a short serial event handler.