Back in second year design class I came up with a simple interactive game idea as part of our final project. Basically it was an electrical circuit tied into a light(s) and at various points around the circuit players manned “key stations” where they depressed switches modeled after common locks (which are interesting little things if you’ve never investigated them). In any event, it wasn’t really so much competitive play as collaborative play. Or something.

Over on Interactive Architecture there’s a post (Link) about something that reminded me of that old project. From the post:

Another interactive kinetic sculpture from Jonathan Schipper , 2 participants are taken from the audience and buckled into the saddles on either end of the machine. The participants are then lifted into the air. Both participants are provided hand controllers that allow them to control the movement of the saddles, which are on pneumatically powered gimbals, and the central rotation of the machine.

It’s an interesting bit of interactive, kinetic sculpture. What really caught my attention, however, was the masks worn by the musicians (shown above). I don’t understand why the musicians are hooked into this thing; seems they didn’t need to be in order to achieve the goals mentioned in the artist’s essay. But those masks are wicked.

{Image Copyright © 2005 Jonathan Schipper}