From 10b4e649760f89f1a69da27813111eae9bae26f6 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: s-ol Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2018 23:30:10 +1100 Subject: more plonat atek documentation --- .../games/plonat_atek/itch_page/URL -> itchio$game | 1 + root/games/plonat_atek/link: URL -> itchio$game | 1 - root/games/plonat_atek/text$markdown.md | 33 ++++++++++++++++++++++ root/games/plonat_atek/video/URL -> youtube$video | 1 + 4 files changed, 35 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) create mode 100644 root/games/plonat_atek/itch_page/URL -> itchio$game delete mode 100644 root/games/plonat_atek/link: URL -> itchio$game create mode 100644 root/games/plonat_atek/text$markdown.md create mode 100644 root/games/plonat_atek/video/URL -> youtube$video diff --git a/root/games/plonat_atek/itch_page/URL -> itchio$game b/root/games/plonat_atek/itch_page/URL -> itchio$game new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c2707e1 --- /dev/null +++ b/root/games/plonat_atek/itch_page/URL -> itchio$game @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +https://s-ol.itch.io/plonat-atek diff --git a/root/games/plonat_atek/link: URL -> itchio$game b/root/games/plonat_atek/link: URL -> itchio$game deleted file mode 100644 index c2707e1..0000000 --- a/root/games/plonat_atek/link: URL -> itchio$game +++ /dev/null @@ -1 +0,0 @@ -https://s-ol.itch.io/plonat-atek diff --git a/root/games/plonat_atek/text$markdown.md b/root/games/plonat_atek/text$markdown.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5296b2f --- /dev/null +++ b/root/games/plonat_atek/text$markdown.md @@ -0,0 +1,33 @@ +# +*Plonat Atek* is a digital game that communicates itself to the player only via the stereo headphone jack. +The signal is split, and one of the streams is fed into a pair of headphones that show the game to the player as a melody, +interlaced with a series of blips and bursts of noise. +The other stream leads into an oscilloscope, that visualises the two channels by moving a dot across the screen in correspondence to the signal. +On the screen, the game manifests as a ball bouncing around in a circular version of *Breakout*. + +Both the oscilloscope and the speakers are analog devices that interpret the signal and generate a representation of the game. +The representations are based on interrelated properties of the same signal. +Thus, the relationship between the audio and visual components is not merely designed, rather the two emerge from identical information: +In *Plonat Atek*, the sound is designed to be seen and the visuals are designed to be heard. +For example the blip heard when the ball bounces is the distortion seen in the same moment, +and the noise heard when the ball is lost is visible as a glitch on the oscilloscope. + + + +*Plonat Atek* is an exploration into the unification of audiovisual signals in the context of feedback in interactive systems. +Both digital and analog audio signals are very thin encodings, +as they map directly to the vibrations on our tympana and thereby the sensations they represent. +In contrast, raster video signals or image encodings are a very contrived, optimized and complicated; +the discrete and serial pixel-per-pixel description of shapes does not come close at all to the way our human perception works. +This is also obvious as the technology required to decode a video signal or image into something a human can perceive is extremely complex. +In *Plonat Atek*, the visual output on the oscilloscope is as directly based on the waveforms encoding it as the audio is. +The thinner encoding allows the simultaneous use of the exact same signal for both the audio output on the speakers and +the visual output on the oscilloscope, thereby intrinsically connecting the two. + +At the same time Plonat Atek is a media archaeological project and hommage. +The earliest video games, such as *Tennis for Two* and *Spacewar!*, as well as later arcade games like *Asteroids*, +and even consoles like the *Vectrex* share the CRT screen whose warm glow transports a unique feeling of messy analogue-ness +coupled with a homely sense of healthy imperfection. +The game itself is a reinterpretation of the classic *Breakout*, a game many players may recognize nostalgically and +that has already gone through transformations from hardware to software, and from an arcade to a pc and finally a mobile game +or something found on a children’s toy that comes free with an order at a fast-food restaurant. diff --git a/root/games/plonat_atek/video/URL -> youtube$video b/root/games/plonat_atek/video/URL -> youtube$video new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bf07555 --- /dev/null +++ b/root/games/plonat_atek/video/URL -> youtube$video @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIQAk9_nc-s -- cgit v1.2.3