My first Pong Clone / Art, noise and logic.

My first Pong Clone /  Art, noise and logic. 

To see Pong is to know what it is and how to play it . Using Pong to make a point is  immediate and direct in both its messaging and creation.

Scientists in Australia have used Pong for experiments involving lab grown brain cells called DishBrain. The synthetic brain goop can play it and gets better with practice. Although it’s not as good as a motivated mouse, apparently. But by using Pong as the IQ test, it’s the sort of scientific breakthrough that the general public can understand. 

Artists will use Pong to speak to a non-game literate art audience.  The non-gaming art viewer or critic will immediately recognize the historical legacy, technological limitations and necessary minimal simplicity of the game.  Pierre Huyghe’s ‘Atari Light’ , is a playable pong clone on a illuminated ceiling. Tom Friedman’s piece ‘Pong’ is a projection of a game of Pong on a well lit gallery wall . Nothing more .

It is also quite understandable why Pong gets used as a tool for interactive expression regarding social justice issues.  The self-explanatory procedural rhetoric game, Discrimination Pong by AND/OR  alters the conditions of our collective understanding of  Pong to illustrate discrimination.http://discriminationpong.and-or.ch

Similarly, it is the perfect conduit for the joke game, parody game or anti-game. It’s a one-liner or bad pun in the comedy pantheon of video games. MondriPong by Kristiana Hansen places Pong inside the works of Mondrian. The artists instantly recognizable and iconic geometric frameworks create the game space for the equally iconic and recognizable game of Pong to take place. Simply being aware of MondriPong feels like being in the MOMA gift shop. https://www.kmhcreative.com/2016/01/28/mondripong/

They write themselves. Waiting for Pongot. Would it be pong without a ball and perhaps a little exit sign up in the corner ? File Sharing Pong could be deployed by companies like We transfer as a way to make a fun little game out of the excruciating mundanity that is the sending and receiving of digital files.  Resident Evil 4 Pong could be the companion level where you have to protect the ball and stop it from wandering off. Leon! 

PONGS by Pippin Barr should almost be the final word on the subject.  Barr makes his point(s) through relentless repetition. PONGS presents the player with not one innovative Pong clone, but 37 of the things. Holistic continuity runs through the collection with almost every iteration containing a single mechanical twist that completely defines the experience. Most of these borrow existing standard conventions from game genres or specific games in particular - Snake Pong , Breakout Pong , QTE Pong , Turn Based Pong and so on. https://pippinbarr.com/pongs/info/

Technically, there is very little to a Pong clone - Two paddles, one ball, three noises, a scoreboard, start and stop and a bit of physics. But there’s just enough going on that you get a sort of taste for the quite distinct disciplines that combine to make a computer game experience. Art, noise and logic. 

PONGS could be the final word on Pong but it’s important that it’s not. Pong creation exists as a place for both wild experimentation and prescriptive,  procedural  learning purposes.  In this sense, it has a lot in common with the demo tape of the unsigned band. It just needs to contain the seed of an idea and to exist as a platform from which to grow or give up . 

Perhaps in the future, the universal metric for showing signs of human intelligence won't be by merely playing Pong but by creating a Pong clone.