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 exterminate humanity. This somewhat luddistic view of technology was popular when desktop PCs were still uncommon and computers were 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 that could 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 develop realistic, immersive 3D environments, the furminator invites the player to plunge his head inside a classic pinball machine, his nose right behind the flipper fingers, only a few centimetres away from the ball. From this first-person perspective, the player feels the same immersive experience with a VR helmet but in a fully mechatronic environment. A force-feedback helmet shakes the player’s head, his hands controlling the flipper fingers as the only defence against the threatening iron ball rolling 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 your head and body to change the ball’s direction.

Kirschner, Reiff and Morawe met at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne and decided to create //////////fur//// – art entertainment interfaces. Their work has since been dedicated to finding new ways of interaction, in their own words: “fighting massive-single-user-isolation”. One of their most successful 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 player’s body 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 it is 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 swept away by more sophisticated devices and virtual environments. It is not by chance that the player holds 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.