Yesterday I went to the Interactive Communications Program (ITP) Winter Show at NYU. There were many great projects, but one in particular caught my attention. Two students — Bona Kim and James Borda — had made a full scale ’80s style arcade game called “The Buddhist”.
The visual iconography was all there for a TRON or PacMan era arcade game, right down to the shapes of the buttons. Except when you played the game, you found that the goal was to enter a contemplative state of mind by letting go of all ego driven goal-directed behavior.
In other words, it is an arcade game, yet it is not an arcade game. Or more precisely, it is a Buddhist Kōan.
This reminded me of a game presented exactly ten years ago, at the ITP 2002 Winter Show, by then-ITP student Ann Poochareon. Her idea was simple: Two players compete with each other by grabbing from a common pool of on-screen words to see who can be the first to successfully complete a Haiku. The game turned out to be extremely popular.
What I find particularly elegant about this idea is that Haiku is in fact traditionally used to juxtapose two contrasting images. As in “The Buddhist”, but perhaps even more so, this game managed to juxtapose competition and contemplation within its very essence.
I can’t remember what the Winter Show was like in 1992, but it would be interesting if it turned out that ITP reaches for enlightenment exactly once every ten years.
My own humble attempts in this direction, quite a few years ago now, were some design experiments for a dance game. Players who successfully match the on-screen dance pattern attain successively higher forms of enlightenment, the ultimate goal being to dance one’s way to Nirvana.
I called it, of course, “Dance Dance Revelation”.
Are there a bad pun police on the Internet? Are they awake and on patrol?
Gosh, I certainly hope not. They would lock me away for sure.
Do not remember
Ninety-two ITP Show
I’d graduated.
I can tell you this:
It was a fusion of the
Arts and Sciences.
🙂
Or as Zhuangzi might have said:
Am I an artist
Dreaming, in the night, that he
Is a scientist?
Or a scientist
Who, in truth, is but dreaming
He is an artist?
Ken
I spent half a day trying to write a blog post on the concept of the “anti buddha”. Since there is so much mythology about an “anti christ”, I wondered what would an anti buddha be? maybe someone who embraced every consumer electronics device ? I couldnt figure it out.
MW