Game Art: Olaf Val's "Clown" (1997)

"The monitor shows an idle fruit machine named "Clown". A picture is monochrome light grey, as two buttons on the outline are flashing alternatively. In one presses one of those buttons, black and white squares appear on the screen. Repetitive pressing of the buttons causes a filling up of the screen due to a randomly determined order transforming the picture into a chessboard. If the visitor, becoming by now a co-player, stops the pressing of the "stop" button, which is placed in the middle or if he holds on a moment, video sequences appear covering the squares partially At the beginning of each video one of the square fields disappears. As soon as alle squares are used up by playing the game, the machine goes back to an idle mode. In accordance to the rules of the game, the visitor determines by the number of squares the number of videos shown. Due to the combination of the buttons set on the left and on the right sight, one can moreover influence the sequence of the video series. The fruit machine plays with the idea to reduce interaction to absurdity. The bare screen comes to live by a bilingual setting and by the simple assignments of right/left, female/male." (Olaf Val)

Link: Ola Val

Submitted by Matteo Bittanti