[artinfo] Pong.mythos - opening - info

[Diana McCarty]

An exhibition about one ball, two bats and our life in a digital world

For the first time the complex manifestations of one of the largest and
most popular establishment myths of our digital information society are
united in one place; the pong.mythos exhibition shows artistic, popular
and scientific works that expose how influential this little game has
become.  Over 20 international artists take up the Pong game and its myth
directly. The exhibition moves consciously between the terrains of
computer history, the entertainment industry, science and art; research
projects that use Pong as an experimental playing field for future human
computer interfaces are presented along with historical game consoles and
a Pong game for the blind.

  [THE MYTH]
In 1972, when Nolan Bushnell founded Atari, the first video game company,
to manufacture the Pong game console, he was hardly conscious of the
historical dimension of this act. The emerging digital games also marked
the beginning of the digitization of daily life. Computer games were the
first applications with which many humans learned computer engineering. In
this sense, Pong, apart from its meaning for computer games history, has a
significant social value. The success of Pong stands - in the sense of
concrete and transferred history - in direct connection with the
development of our digital information society.

Spokesperson: Andreas Lange
Email: lange at computerspielemuseum.de
Tel:  +49 (0)30 29049215
http://pong-mythos.net


Opening: Friday, 10 February 2006, 19:00
11 February - 30 April 2006
Württembergischen Kunstverein
Schlossplatz 2,  D-70173 Stuttgart
Tel: +49 (0)711  22 33 70,
Fax. +49 (0)711  29 36 17,
info at wkv-stuttgart.de,
http://www.wkv-stuttgart.de