And that celebration? Playing
PONG. On the side of the Cira Centre. Which is a building over 400 feet tall.
From about a mile out. For all the city to see. Magical.
Philly Tech week is an annual
celebration of technology and the arts through over 100 events, naturally
taking place in the city of brotherly love. As Technically Philly‘s
Christopher Wink said at the event, Philly Tech Week is to show folks the
amazing minds and the amazing work that’s being done in the Philadelphia area,
and about the intersection of arts and technology to inspire the region.
This year to kick it off along those lines, Dr. Frank Lee of Drexel
University and his crew rigged the Cira Centre with hundreds of LED’s, each one
mapped to its own IP address (pretty slick right?), and coded a version
of PONG that could communicate with each of those lights. The controls
were outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where the rest of the party was.
So from the museum steps famous for that Rocky training
montage, denizens of our fair city could watch some classic gameplay on an
83,000 square foot makeshift screen.
Why PONG though? In the
words of Dr. Lee when he spoke to Polygon last month, ”Pong is
part of our culture,” he said. “Pong lives in every game that came
since then. If you get down the tree of the life of the video game, it will
lead at the root to Pong. Pong was the first
successful commercial game.” Makes a lot of sense given that the good
doctor describes himself as a gamer, and he was also one of the two paddle
combatants in the inaugural match. He defeated Jerry Sweeney, CEO of the
Brandywine Realty Trust, the company that owns the Cira Centre. It was a
clash of titans – Sweeney, the guy that owns the building, taking on Lee, the
guy hacking it.
Dr. Lee pulled out the win in the
5 point match, but as mentioned by Christopher Wink, who emceed the whole event,
with an asterisk next to it in the history books – see the video below to see
what I’m talking about:
Outside of the main event, there
were classic arcade machines set up as well as some live chuptunes. The
whole thing was threatened by weather, but in addition to Dr. Lee and Mr.
Sweeney about 60 players were able to go to old school war in the hour and
change the event was able to last. Luckily for the couple hundred of
other folks that were there to see the action, the rain held off for a good
bit. Unfortunately for me though, it started just in
time to render me drenched by the time i finished my trek from the Art Museum
to Suburban Station to catch my train home.
Dr. Lee talked about working with
the Guinness folks
about establishing the world record for the biggest video game ever.
Apparently something similar was done by Atari in Kansas City a while
back, but that was only a 22 story building. The Cira Centre is 29, so
mathematically there shouldn’t be any issues getting the record confirmed.
It was an awesome time and a great
way to kick off the events of the coming week. Oh and by the way, in
your face Kansas City.
With love, Philadelphia.
No comments:
Post a Comment