Camping Pong is an improvisation. Four friends go on a camping trip and spontaneously develop the idea of Camping Pong. The source game is retranslated into a pre-digital state. The image is not produced on an electronic screen anymore, but projected to an archaic surface using light and shadow. The ball remains an electrically generated light dot, but is now controlled by a human hand.

At the same time, Nissen's work clearly refers to the time after Pong. With Camping Pong, Nissen reaches beyond the original game events by aesthesising them. The game context of Pong is kept only as a projection. The events on the screen are composed to a game only in the imagination of those who are familiar with Pong. The players themselves become actors.

The recording technology, too, is a clear reference to the present day. Only the video feature of a digital photographic camera makes the emergence of Camping Pong possible. With Pong the work picks up a traditionalised motive of our “digital era” to reinterpret it with the possibilities of today's wide-spread digital mobile technology. This does not happen conceptually or planned but on a whim, just as the original game invites to spontaneous entertainment.

(A. Lange)

 

 

Noel Nissen works and lives in the Canada as a designer.

 

Other involved persons: