PROJECT
Responsive Playgounds: Introduction
ACTIVITY
KMD
https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/3966718/3966719
The project investigates how intersecting trajectories of cinematic illusion, gaming technologies, and their associated tools and devices influenced current and past forms of hybrid media.
Leading to the question how novel contributions or hybrid media innovations can emerge from the fusion of these technologies, and how might they shape future design practices?
Rather than interpreting these developments through a linear progression from low-tech to high-tech, might we instead identify alternate trajectories that challenge dominant industry standards and technological narratives? By revisiting and recontextualizing legacy technologies, either by integrating emerging tools with outdated systems or by valuing the unique affordances of older media, how can we uncover new paradigms of technological development and creative practice?
The boundaries between media forms have never been entirely fixed, but in recent decades, the interplay between cinema, gaming, and digital technologies has generated a rapid expansion of hybrid works that challenge traditional categorizations. At the heart of this convergence lies a shared fascination with illusion—cinematic, optical, and interactive. Over decades, the parallel developments of games and game design, alongside the evolution of optical illusions and the subsequent rise of cinema, have come together to form hybrid productions in the design field. These converging developments—rooted in the manipulation of perception, time, and space—have shaped how we engage with media today, creating a new space for interactive design, immersive environments, and experiential media.
This research explores the parallel and often intersecting historical timelines of cinematic illusion and gaming technologies, with particular attention to the material devices that supported their development. In doing so, it also explores what these developments contribute to the design field, both in terms of visual aesthetics and interaction design. By examining how visual trickery, narrative immersion, and user interactivity have evolved across both domains, the research seeks to uncover the aesthetic, conceptual, and system-level undercurrents that shape today’s hybrid digital media works. These works often blur the lines between viewer and player, between story and system, and between illusion and interaction—qualities that are increasingly central to the design of interactive environments, interfaces, and experiential media.
1929 Kaleidoscpe
The Sensorama was an early VR device developed in 1960 by Morton Heilig. It combined a stereoscopic 3D display with sensory elements like vibrating seats, fans for wind effects, and scent emitters
An operator working with VR glasses and input gloves developed by VPL Research, 1986.
 in 1977, a hybrid between a digital video game and analog electro-mechanical game, combining CPU microprocessor technology with electro-mechanical components to project 3D visuals on a screen.](attachment:53f40cc4-f447-46d7-a623-94470d9cfc19:620d38ae64f2a5542249617fcd051b5c.jpg)
Heli-Shooter is a 3D combat flight simulator arcade game developed and published by [Sega](https://segaretro.org/Sega_Enterprises,_Ltd.) in 1977, a hybrid between a digital video game and analog electro-mechanical game, combining CPU microprocessor technology with electro-mechanical components to project 3D visuals on a screen.
A key aim of this investigation is to draw the meeting points between the histories of optical devices and cinematic techniques, and those of games, interactive technologies, and computational design. These intersections are not only historical but fundamentally affect design practices. The development of devices such as the zoetrope, early animation techniques, and mechanical toys are echoed in the modular design of video games and interactive installations today. The game engine—once purely a tool for gameplay—has evolved into a powerful design instrument for creating immersive**,** dynamic systems. Similarly, the first-person perspective, from its roots in optical experiments, has become a standard interactive design paradigm that shapes user experience in both games and digital installations. By tracing these points of convergence, we begin to see how design concepts such as modularity, interactivity, and user agency have evolved through both the visual history of cinema and the interactive logic of games.
The Rhizome ArtBase is an archive with over 2,200 artworks to date, primarily hosting works of net art, but also including works that employ media such as software, code, websites, moving images, games, and browsers.
Dragan Espenshied & Olia Lialina (Merz Academy) depict the first years of the he “vernacular web”
Papperrad was a USA based art collective known for a distinct "lo-fi" aesthetic often associated with underground culture or 1990s "retro tech"
Agatha Appears, Olia Lialina, 1997 (restored in 2008)
Jodi pioneered Web art in the mid-1990s. Jodi were among the first artists to investigate and subvert conventions of the Internet, computer programs and video and computer games.
An essential node in this network is the influence of early 2000s net art, where artists and designers working with early web technologies (HTML, Flash, Java applets) experimented with design aesthetics and interactive interfaces that were raw, non-commercial, and often gamified. This era's DIY aesthetic, along with the frequent use of repetition, feedback loops, and user engagement, influenced the design of interactive websites and interfaces, challenging traditional design conventions and paving the way for the more participatory design principles seen in contemporary digital media. Net artists such as JODI, Olia Lialina, and Cory Arcangel helped reframe the internet as a site not only for information, but as a space of interactive play—redefining the very notion of web design and user interaction.
At the same time, the reseachproject incorporates the concept of “digital folklore”, as articulated by Olia Lialina and Dragan Espenschied. Digital folklore refers to the emergent meaning making resources and user practices that flourish in networked communication spaces—emoticons, memes, copy-pasted jokes, and internet slang—that are often trivialized yet deeply ingrained in digital culture. These practices can be understood as forms of vernacular creativity and folk art, where users collectively create and share meaning through everyday online practices. These forms emphasize the role of users as creators within the digital ecosystem. Digital folklore contributes significantly to design practices by shifting the focus towards informal, participatory and user-driven design methods. The spread of memes, viral media, and internet subcultures influences everything from interface design to marketing strategies, showing how shared cultural knowledge and collective creativity shape digital experiences.
Packratcollective, is a demogroup that creates games for the 1984 Vectrex, once made into a gaming device from surplus medical oscillators
Attack of the PETSCII Robots is a current day videogame made for the classic Commodore 64 using the PETSCII graphic language
Simultaneously, the aesthetic and structural influence of data graphics, from early military interfaces to modern real-time visualizations, has played a significant role in shaping the design of interactive systems and information visualization. These visual systems are directly linked to both cinematic framing techniques and the logic of gaming HUDs (heads-up displays). The use of data as both aesthetic and informational content speaks to a larger design development that integrates storytelling with information systems, offering new forms of design that blend narrative, system architecture, and user interface.
Furthermore, computer games contribute not only to interactivity but also to the evolution of visual grammars and spatial design. Game design has introduced modular environments, nonlinear storytelling, and real-time feedback loops that have influenced everything from architectural visualizations to immersive installations. Games offer compelling models for designing user-centered experiences, where the boundaries between design and user agency dissolve. Game engines, which were once purely tools for gameplay, have become versatile platforms for creating interactive, speculative spaces—altering how designers conceive of virtual worlds, environments, and experiential design.
World of Bitsy is acustommade enviornment by Marc Wannacott that turns bitsy animations into an endless moving pattern
Aaron Coplands 1952 “Seeing Sound” movies drawn on celluloid film
The MingMecca is an analog modular video device that uses the classic Nintendo´s NES chip for creating generative graphics
The researchproject also looks into the generative and live performative aspects, traditionally ineheret to Live Cinema and VJ-culture, in videogame devices and software. Starting in the early 1930s with the “Seeing Sound Movement” where artists would draw on celluloid, and gradually leading to electronic, analog devices such as developed by Bell Labs and the Experimental Television Center, important for pioneering video art and supporting innovation in media through artist residencies, technical resources, and the development of unique video processing tools. Parallel to this movement, the presence of videoconsoles, that often emerge from the demoscene, a computer art subculture focused on creating real-time audiovisual presentations started in the early 1970s with the rise of homegameconsoles such as the atari, amiga and Commodore 64. Here, videogamedevices were used as performative and/or generative devices for creating (live) animation, where parallels can be drawn in the tradition of celluloid based live cinema, stemming from the early 1930s and their analog successors.
My artistic practice is concerned with the development of responsive, interactive
computer games, data generated landscapes and science fiction phenomena,
visually translated to physical installations that reference their digital origins.
In my installations, I try to include visual traces of the operational process, where
both process and end result can be seen simultaneously, visualising the process
that previously only existed behind the screens.
This process is enhanced through novel interfaces and methods for experimental
interaction, mechanics and gameplay, which lie at the core for the audience to
explore, and forms the catalysts for setting these works in motion.