game mod from steph thirion on Vimeo.

I’ve just spent a couple of weeks at Visualizar helping out with conceptual and technical development of projects.

In the first couple of days a few people mentioned a video one of the artist’s at the workshop had made. Ben Fry said “you have to see it” and pointed at Steph Thirion.

Ben was right. The video documents a 6hr workshop run by Steph in a Postgraduate Diploma in Graphic Design course at Elisava, Barcelona, in March this year and it is very special.

The workshop concept was simple: take an existing Breakout-like game (made by Steph in Processing), give it to the students and encourage them to simply change numbers and alter code statements until it either breaks or does something interesting.

The result is surprising: as though Breakout has been freed from a need to make sense and is dreaming of its own pure potential.. A warm homage to the game if ever there was one.

Here’s that video.

To quote the project page.

Game Mod was a six hour long workshop with the objective of showing the participants that it is not required to understand code to experiment and play with it.

Although they had no experience in coding, the task of each participant was to make a mod (modified version) of a game built in Processing.

Great stuff, testimony that creative programming can result from an open-minded, truly intuitive manipulation of code.

Grab the original game source-code here, and have a hack at it yourself. The source for the mods you see in the video can be downloaded here. If you come up with something you think’s interesting, let us know.

Check in on Steph’s site for updates on his new project, Cascade on Wheels, made during the Visualizar workshop. If you’re in the Madrid area, come and see it at the exhibition at Medialab Prado itself (28.11.07 - 28.12.07)

Fine work Steph and students. This is going into the archives. [blogged by Julian on SelectParks]