Introduction

In this text I will attempt to give insight into my process and the concepts I am working with and place them in a broader context. The theoretical and historical research is also supplemented with profoundly personal experiences. As a secondary purpose it serves as a catalog of projects I have been working on in the past two years. The first chapter revolves around funfairs, technology and games, providing a backdrop for the following two chapters, each of which introduces a device prototype: Potator (a multi-purpose rotating platform), followed by Slap-a-Butt (a haptic experience vending machine). Afterward I will contrast two types of video games that have both striking similarities and dissimilarities, namely the arcade game and the flight simulator, with the purpose of unpacking some of the themes surrounding interfaces between the virtual and the physical. These themes, while already present in the projects of the previous two chapters, become an essential component of the projects described and developed afterwards. Before diving into discussion of my graduation work in the last chapter, I will track back to one of my initial formative influences, namely a piece of multimedia software called Macromedia Flash.

The projects and themes described are not linearly related to each other; I have worked on these projects concurrently, sometimes dropping one to pick it up later. Hence, the initial intention was to reflect this process and compile my writing into a webbed, rhizomatic mind-map-like structure. However, during the writing process a somewhat logical, overarching throughline emerged: the oscillation between the physical and the virtual and an exploration of their boundaries and zones of interaction in between. The final part of the text is a dissection of my graduation work, which incorporates the aforementioned motifs.