About the Bizarro Game Controllers Workshop

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

Bizarro game controllers are ideal for interaction with dynamic visual art, with music, and for creating tangible interfaces. They are also really fun to build. The group-based, hands-on activities of this workshop make it a great team-building exercise, precisely because you're all actually building.

Here is some video from one of our workshops

Here are some pictures from another workshop

Expected Preparation

• We typically expect participants to give some thought to the sort of controller they want to build. They should consider what sort of bodily (inter)action, or what sort of interesting sensor, they might want to use as the basis of their bizarre game controller. They should know what materials they will need on hand in order to build it, and will be responsible for sourcing any unusual or specific materials. If this presents difficulties for people who want to participate, they may contact us to figure out how to procure what they need.
• We generally expect participants to bring a laptop computer with Arduino, Processing, and required libraries installed (we provide installation instructions).
• Participants will be encouraged to bring their own Arduino, if they have it.

Expected Skills

• Basic hardware skills: competence with prototyping simple circuits on a breadboard. We can help with soldering.
• Basic programming skills with Arduino and either Processing or Java.
• If you don't meet all of these prerequisites and still want to participate, please email the organizers ahead of time to inquire. We'll try to find a way to accomodate you.

We 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.