Pongmechanik, the tennis mechanic.

Pongmechanik

The 'pong', which is the first video game that has made inroads through the origianle and various clones in the families of the years between the years 70 and 80 (at launch compared to the courts, of which the fundamental mechanism stylized), is now a concept in its own right. Almost thirty years after the birth of tennis there are revisions that make use of its world-famous model to convey different interpretations, such as the excellent Pongmechanik Niklas Roy. It is a tennis electromechanical built with strict principles. The choice not to use microprocessors or electronics, but telephone relays, for example, is a clear choice to give tribute to Konrad Zuse and his first computer in 1935, similarly assembled. Among other things, what has been painstakingly implemented is the 'visibility of computation', the time required to check its operation, now used as a cosmetic revealing and perfectly in line with the tendency to 'transparency', used in the first iMac and still in the range of successful options of designers. The use of transparent glass, in fact, and the possibility of an audible mechanical sound of the relays in place, shares of the ongoing processes in a visible and audible, revealing every mechanism behind the actions of the two players. For the rest is unleashed what could be termed as' pong effect ', already used in' PainStation ', Tilman Reiff and Volker Morawe, which can give an electric shock to those who lose, and in' The Intruder 'by Natalie Bookchin, where winning a match allows access to the following paragraphs of a work of electronic literature. The paradigm immediate and the hypnotic interaction of the game fail again to reinforce the perception of the universality of its geometric abstraction.