Fruit Machine

video/webm
640 × 480
02:25

Fruit Machine
image/jpeg
394 × 300

Fruit Machine
image/jpeg
394 × 300

The Fruit Machine
image/x-ms-bmp
480 × 360

The Fruit Machine
image/x-ms-bmp
480 × 360

The Fruit Machine
image/x-ms-bmp
480 × 360

The Fruit Machine
image/x-ms-bmp
480 × 360

Fruit Machine; Installation Nagoya
image/tiff
532 × 532

Fruit Machine
image/tiff
400 × 324

Fruit Machine, exhibition space
image/tiff
520 × 518

Fruit Machine
image/jpeg
394 × 300

In this installation, an interactive format similar to FOURSPACE (1991) has been developed in a different aesthetic direction. The game as a primary modality of interactivity is chosen as the functional context for a strategy of communication (person/machine/person), and the related iconography of fruit is chosen for all of its associative values in an imaginary space where Archimboldo and Nintendo can meet.

Three viewers using multi-axis joysticks share the interactive manipulation of a computer-generated image that is projected onto a large screen in front of them. The image is a half octagonal cylinder, divided into three parts that can each be freely moved about in the pictorial space by the viewers.

On the surface of this cylinder there are rows of various fruits, which makes an association with the well known gambling machines. Under this operational guise The Fruit Machine appropriates the style of a video game to fulfill its underlying aesthetic objectives. Needing cooperation and some skill, the three operators move the individual parts until they are connected together so that the rows of various fruits are coherently joined. An effusive and clamorous shower of virtual coins then rewards the viewers.

(A. Hegedüs)

Winner of the PRIZMA-Prize for Computer Art, Hamburgische Kulturstiftung
1993