The furminator: analogue is cool, too

The unstoppable human-shaped killing machine known as The Terminator first appeared in the movie by James Cameron in 1984. It then represented the fear that, in the future, machines would rule the earth and extermine humanity. This somewhat luddistic view of technology was popular in a time when desktop PCs were still not common and computers where seen as big things owned by corporations. Seven years later, in Terminator 2 the flesh-and-iron cyborg had to face a much more effective opponent, the T1000, a new generation robot made of liquid steel who had the abilty to change its shape at will. The film became very popular for its innovative use of CG effects, and many saw the fight of the two terminators as a metaphor of the clash of analogue versus digital.

Today, artists Roman Kirschner, Tilman Reiff and Volker Morawe have sided with the analogue in their latest project: the furminator. When most video games are developing realistic, immersive 3D environments, the furminator invites the player to plunge his head inside a classic pinball machine, his nose situated right behind the flipper fingers, only a few centimeters away from the ball. From this first person perspective, the player feels the same immersive experience one would get with a VR helmet, but in a fully mechatronic environment. The player's head is shaken by a force-feedback helmet, his hands controlling the flipper fingers as the only defense against the threatening iron ball that rolls at high speed towards his face. Five cameras and three mini LCD screens provide views of the playfield that cannot be seen from the player's perspective. The machine is a sort of oversized helmet that adapts to the player's height, so that standing up, his hands on the QuickShot II joysticks, his head is swallowed into the pinball playfield. Just as with any other pinball, it is possible to shake head and body to change the direction of the ball.

Kirschner, Reiff and Morawe met at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne and decided to create //////////fur//// - art entertainment interfaces. Their work has since then been dedicated to find new ways of interaction, in their own words: "fighting massive-single-user-isolation" . One of their most succesful projects has been the Painstation (2001) a two-player enhanced Pong game in which players get physically punished when they miss the ball. In this project the body of the player becomes (painfully) involved in the game, as an experiment in user-machine interaction. But there is also a hint of criticism towards the whole gaming industry and the need to go beyond the actual level of interactivity. The combination of one of the oldest videogames ever made, with its ascetic interface, and a device that caused pain to the player turned into a big success and there were plans to turn the machine into a commercial entertainment device, Painstation2 (2003), which to date hasn't been distributed.

Although being basically an entertainment device, Painstation brought to mind some serious thoughts about user-machine interaction, gaming as culture and pain as part of the game. Now, the furminator reminds us of the old machines that have been swept away by more sofisticated devices and virtual environments. It is not by chance that the player holds in his hands two QuickShot II Joysticks from the Commodore 64 era, and that the pinball is decorated with the metallic skull of the T101 from Terminator 2. The furminator, with its mechatronic immersive environment, is a claim for the good old analogue versus the overwhelming digital.