Magnesia

Interactive installation in collaboration with Karina Smigla-Bobinski and Tatiana Vilela
The Brain - Open Lab / Berlin 2015

In spring 2015 I took part together with Karina Smigla-Bobinski and Tatiana Vilela in a residency project, which was organized as a part of The Brain – Open Lab initiated by the Polish Institute Berlin and the Institut Français Germany in partnership with A MAZE. We were one of the two teams whose task was to come up with an interactive installation for A MAZE festival, which focuses on independent games and playful media.

During our exploration of different materials, we got obsessed with magnets and came up with an installation called Magnesia, with which two teams can play a game. The aim is to move steel balls with a magnetic controller over disc-shaped goals on the sides of the playfield. As half of the goals are color-coded in red and half in blue, the game can be played in “red” and “blue” teams. When one team manages to position a ball in all of their goals, colored “winning” light effects occur.

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The installation was built in a large box covered with a transparent acrylic glass surface, under which the playfield resides. All the electronics for the light effects reside under a further acrylic glass layer, below the playfield. When one looks inside the box, the multilayered structure and mirror-coated walls create a visually complex “infinity view” akin to a metaphorical brain.

The dynamic light effects in the installation are created via two separate circuits. The first effect takes place when a player moves a steel ball with the magnetic controller across the playfield: transparent acrylic sticks near the ball light up. This effect is based on reed switches, which close in the presence of a magnetic field, thus lighting up LEDs. The second effect occurs when one team manages to get a steel ball on each of their three goals: the inside of the box starts to blink in the color of the team, thus in red or blue. This winning effect is due to the goals acting as switches that are connected in series. When a metal ball is on one goal, it connects two halves of an aluminum disc and closes part of the circuit. Balls on all of the three goals complete the circuit.

At the end of our residency we presented a prototype of Magnesia at the Polish Institute. Some weeks later, the final version was available for a bigger audience at the A MAZE festival, pimped up by a new box built by Stephan Bosse and his colleagues. You can see in this video from ARTE Creative a glimpse of the A MAZE festival atmosphere and the two installations made by the “The Brain – Open Lab” teams.

Magnesia is currently available for playing at the Game Science Center in Berlin.

Many thanks to my teammates Karina and Tatiana and for Stephan Bosse and his colleagues for the nice collaboration. Thank you also to Thorsten Wiedemann and the Polish and French cultural institutes for inviting me to the project. Lastly, special thanks to Mikołaj Tarnowski for his great help during the residency without which it would have been impossible to get the installation prototype finished on time.

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Magnesia is currently available for playing at the Game Science Center in Berlin.