SXSWi report: Game Perverts: A Robot, a DS and a Dot Matrix Printer Menage a Trois
Sunday morning I caught the panel Game Perverts: A Robot, a DS and a Dot Matrix Printer Menage a Trois.
The guys on the panel were all doing some really cool stuff with hacking consumer hardware, an idea I like a lot. For she shear I -can’t-believe-he-got-that-to-work ingenuity I was really impressed by Paul Slocum’s hack of an old dot matrix printer, to make it into a musical instrument. By changing the timing of the pins hitting the paper he could generate musical notes with a printer.
I also really liked the work Bob Sabiston had done with a homebrew drawing/animation app on the Nintendo DS gameboy. The app seemed small but perfectly formed and he is working on plans to se the DS’ wifi capabilities to be able to share drawings through the web from the device. The image above is of a full sized canvas print of pixel art that Bob drew in his app, apparently while watching TV – obviously a talented guy.
I have a quarter-baked idea about tying in the DS/drawing/WiFi thing with the ideas we’re kicking around at Wireless Toronto for developing local engagement/creation aspects of our 30 location specific portals. More to come on that I hope.
Speaking of pixel art, I really think you should check out Gary J. Lucken. His pixel art is full of whimsy and I think he does a good job of presenting why people are attracted to video games from an artistic standpoint. I’ve written about him at length here.
Christopher Trottier
12 Mar 07 at 7:31 pm