Tag: Chris Novello

Synthesizer-Videogame Mashups

by Aurelio Meza The showcase video Super Mario Spacetime Organ (illucia & Soundscape) by Chris Novello starts asking, “What is a video game?” We could expand the scope of this speculation and ask, “What is an instrument?” (Georgina Born and Joe Snape finish an article on MaxMSP exactly with that question). These two interrogations bring together Max, customized instruments, and video games into the discussion of devices and instrumentality. How devices are operated through a physical interface is central to this discussion. Game controllers, just like piano or computer keyboards, can be defined as boundary objects (after Susan Leigh Star)–surfaces of interaction between an instrument and its user (here I’m using the notion of instrument in a very broad sense)....