It became a mega-hit not only in its birthplace Japan but across the world and is loved still today by many people. PAC-MAN attracted not only the traditional game fans but also a new wave audience of young and old alike who were captivated by the game’s simple rules, profound game system, colorful and cute characters design, rhythmical BGM and unique SE and the comical intermission sequences between each level. In many ways, PAC-MAN was the first avatar to create a communication bridge between a coded, virtual world and the people. As the hype grew, approximately 400 different types of merchandise were released one after another and PAC-MAN became a social phenomenon embedded in the human psyche as a symbolic icon representing game culture and the social impact.

And now, if we regard PAC-MAN as a reflection of human social instinct and release it from the game screen into the actual world, what kind of and characteristics will it feature and what will PAC-MAN‘s new role be in the future?

Pacathon is an open innovation process that was born out of a research project: an adventure to explore what a next generation of PAC-MAN could look like. Through the collective minds of the BANDAI NAMCO group, Ars Electronica and Hakuhodo, these three collaborators have been carrying out research and workshops since May 2017 to understand the essence of future playing and to unearth the social value of PAC-MAN in order to prototype PAC-MAN’s future. This project aims to explore the potential of innovative gamification with the Ars Electronica Festival participants through Pacathon.

Credits

Text: Hideaki Ogawa (Ars Electronica Futurelab), Rena Tanaka (Hakuhodo Inc.)

PAC-MANTM&©BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Inc.

The apprentices of Wacker Neuson asked this question and found a result, which can be watched here:

A ball gets to a high starting point by a programmed hydraulic shovel. When the ball is rolling down the path, different elements are triggered in this construction.

When the ball gets to the end of the path, the hydraulic shovel puts it to the starting point automatically – and the game starts again!

It’s easy to navigate through, has numerous puzzle elements, offers challenging opponents, and contains multiple levels featuring diverse designs, which together guarantee a game experience that’s both enduring and entertaining.

LARES is a collaborative project by a group of students, each of whom contributed her/his respective skills.

Two smaller screens provide immediate feedback on: whether the player has guessed correctly, the origin of the item in question, its rating on debunking platforms such as Mimikama or Snopes, along with some stats (such as the number of shares on social media) and how other players have done before. The hoaxly project provides open-source tools to assist media consumers in becoming more media literate.

Credits

Christian Ziegler, Nico Grienauer, Florian Fida, Oliver Köhler, Alexander Sulz, Luis Rosenstrauch, Nika Matzenauer

The project is supported by netidee.

The first Cybathlon was successfully launched in 2016 as an international event in which people with disabilities or physical weakness use advanced assistive devices, including robotic technologies, to compete against each other. Sixty-six pilots assisted by 400 team members in 56 teams from 25 nations, participated in six different disciplines. One discipline is the Brain-Computer Interface Race, where an avatar in a computer game is controlled purely by brain waves. Can you do it as well?

Credits

Project: CYBATHLON / ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Inventor and initiator: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Robert Riener

BCI Game: BrainRunners, developed for the BCI Race of the Cybathlon 2016 in cooperation with ETH Zurich and Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), Switzerland

Each player is issued with a spaceship; then they see who can gather the most rubbish floating around in an asteroid belt. The project’s mission is to raise awareness of the growing problem of space debris, though not by inducing a state of collective melancholy; the approach here is gaming fun produced by a program developed especially for Deep Space 8K at the Ars Electronica Center. Maybe future players will find a solution to this very real problem. It remains to be seen whether the creators and the players aren’t indirectly contributing to the space-junk debacle!

Credits

Schüler der 6. Klassen, WPG Informatik: Jonas Dierneder, Johannes Dorfwirth, Paul Langeder, Maximilian Leitner, Lukas Oppenauer

Coach: DI Gerald Landl

On the whole, the player has to display strategic thinking and foresight so that he can lead his country into a bright future. In case one of the scores drops to 0, the head of government is removed from office—either constitutionally or violently. Whoever survives his term in office goes off into a peaceful retirement.

The Deep Space program of PAC-MAN comes from the team thinking about new experiences and new language. Just as PAC-MAN in the 80s imagined new sites of impact beyond the screen and arcade so Funguage seeks to find a site of universal language.“What would a non-verbal language to be shared beyond cultural boarders be like?”

PAC-MAN Meets Deep Space 8K will be presented in the context of the Pacathon at the Ars Electronica Center.

Pacathon: BANDAI NAMCO Holdings Inc. (JP), Ars Electronica Futurelab (AT), Hakuhodo Inc. (JP)

While walking through ancient Athens, up to seven people gather different media and get in touch with media-philosophical celebrities from the ancient world to the present. Vilém Flusser drives aside the telematic society ad nauseam, Laura Mulvey takes a joyful look at our memory and Marshall McLuhan finally gets his well-deserved message. Smartphones, newspapers, Lego bricks, sleeping masks, stamps and other media are used through twelve unique stations. At the festival, Myth of Theuth is put on display for the first time in a unique performance with four well-known personalities from media art and media philosophy.

Credits

Studio: qujOchÖ

Direction: Davide Bevilacqua
Production: Eva Maria Dreisiebner
Script: Thomas Philipp
Design and Editing: Stefan Eibelwimmer
Support: Bundeskanzleramt Österreich Kunst und Kultur, Land Oberösterreich, Stadt Linz, Austria Wirtschaftsservice GmbH aws

V2_, Lab for the Unstable Media (NL)

The Summer Sessions pop-up exhibition shows a selection of outcomes realized through the international exchange of emerging talents within the Summer Sessions network. Summer Sessions are short-term residencies for young and emerging artists, organized by an international network of cultural organizations.

Each summer the partners participating in this network for talent development collaborate to offer professional production support and expert feedback to artists in the realization of a new artwork or design. Local talents from each partner’s geographic region are scouted and selected for a residency abroad, where they are offered highly productive atmospheres and specific kinds of expertise at one of the international partners in the international network. While the pop-up exhibition illustrates the kind of results that this pressure-cooker residency format results in, a live event will highlight the experiences that participants have had abroad, and the effects these experiences had on their early careers.

Credits

The projects are produced as part of the Summer Sessions Network for Talent Development in a co-production with Metamedia Association, Kitchen Budapest, Art Center Nabi, Arquivo 237 and V2_, Lab for the Unstable Media

The Physical Rhythm Machine

Philip Vermeulen (NL)

The installation is a closed system that shoots balls at up to 130 kilometers per hour to create sound patterns in extreme violence. The installation cannot only be seen as an instrument, which the artist can play live, but also as an autonomous system, which creates rhythms with the help of algorithms. It breathes the flavors of rough mechanics and the early experiments of the classical minimalist movement.

Emotion Hero

Ruben van de Ven (NL)

What does it mean to feel 48 percent surprised and 18 percent joyful? Over recent years new software has emerged that estimates what people feel based on their facial expressions. Emotion Hero is a project consisting of a game and an exhibition that encourage the visitor to investigate how faces and feelings are represented by this software. The central question is what are we looking at when we read emotion scores? Which leads one to wonder what we are looking for in these numbers.

Web Spaces

Jip de Beer (NL)

Web Spaces is an ongoing investigation into the structure of web pages. How can three-dimensional beings, like you and me, explore the virtual landscape of web pages? By rendering the building blocks of a web page in three dimensions, the architecture beneath its surface is revealed.

Origin: Sustained

Mischa Daams (NL)

Origin: Sustained is an audiovisual expedition into the abstract, organic universe that results from a feedback loop between an lcd screen and a video camera. A machine that controls the camera is composed to unfold a hypnotizing voyage of abstract patterns. This happens before the eyes of the audience, in real time. This evolutionary copy-process, where one image feeds and mutates the next, demands for continuation. So in order to sustain this loop, Daams has deployed a perception algorithm to look at and respond to the chaotic patterns that emerge. The machine as steersman is responsible for the unfolding and continuity of the light/life cycle, resulting in the film.
Origin: Sustained is commissioned by FIBER with the support of the Mondriaan Fund NL and Stroom Den Haag. The first automatic expedition ‘Origin:Cycle #1’ was realized as part of the Summer Sessions network in a co-production of Art Center Nabi and V2_ Lab for the Unstable Media, with support of the Creative Industries Fund NL.