- The homepage to the exhibition is now online!

And any of you in Germany between the 11 February to 30 April 2006
be sure to check out the exhibition at the Wuerttemberg Art Association in
Stuttgart, as it hosts the premiere of PONG.mythos the exhibition.



An exhibition about one ball, two bats and our life in a digital world

[The Project]
PONG.mythos presents over 30 works that revolve around the
computer game Pong. Pong, in the early 70s, turned the simple game of
tennis into the signal for the emergence of the computer game industry.
Since then, it has developed from its historical origin in game halls to
an important social, scientific and cultural reference system.

[The Artists]
//////////fur//// (D), Ascii Art Essemble (NL/SLO), Ralph Baer (USA),
Blinkenlights(D), Jaygo Bloom (GB), Blunty (AU), James Clar (USA) (tbc),
Dirk Eijsbouts (NL), VALIE EXPORT (A), Kiia Kallio (FI), Stephan ST
Kambor(D), Andrew Milmoe (USA), Mathilde MµPe (NL), Josh Nimoy (USA),
Noel Nissen, (USA), Oska Software (AU), Alan Outten (GB), Niklas Roy
(D), Leif Rumbke (D), Antoine Schmitt (F), Jan-Peter ER Sonntag (D),
Olaf Val (D), buro vormkrijgers (NL), Philip Worthington (UK)

For the first time the complex manifestations of one of the largest and
most popular establishment myths of our digital information society are
united in one place; the pong.mythos exhibition shows artistic, popular
and scientific works that expose how influential this little game has
become. Over 20 international artists take up the Pong game and its myth
directly. The exhibition moves consciously between the terrains of
computer history, the entertainment industry, science and art; research
projects that use Pong as an experimental playing field for future human
computer interfaces are presented along with historical game consoles
and a Pong game for the blind.

[THE MYTH]
In 1972, when Nolan Bushnell founded Atari, the first video game
company, to manufacture the Pong game console, he was hardly conscious
of the historical dimension of this act. The emerging digital games also
marked the beginning of the digitization of daily life. Computer games
were the first applications with which many humans learned computer
engineering. In this sense, Pong, apart from its meaning for computer
games history, has a significant social value. The success of Pong
stands - in the sense of concrete and transferred history - in direct
connection with the development of our digital information society.

pong.mythos is a cooperation between the Computer Games Museum in
Berlin, the Württemberg Art Association, The Games Convention/Messe,
Leipzig, Kornhausforum, Bern and other partners.

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