Dear all, For your enjoyment a short video from last night; https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=432229103453985&;
(should be visible to non-FB users as well) I re-implemented Pong so that everything would happen "on the beat", balls hitting the paddle are quantised to the bar, bounces of the wall to quarter notes. This is done by pre-calculating the ball's path as it leaves the paddle (using geo-line-intersect, reflecting in the normal, then recursing), then spreading out the timings for the bounces evenly weighed by the distances. This pre-calculation also makes space for latency compensation. Some simple analysis is performed on how the players are doing (score, length of volleys, etc). That data + the ball and paddle positions and so on was send over MIDI to Ji Youn Kang who wrote the SC patch that turns it all into a soundtrack. Then we handed original paddle controllers for the Atari (soldered to a MIDI interface instead) to audience volunteers to perform our "rule-based composition". Also of interest to Fluxus users; using a low-rez pixels renderer (32x32 pixels) set as a non-anti-aliased texture for a economical and easy "8 bit effect" on the playing field. I hope some of the atmosphere comes accross in the brief video. Kas.
