An evening of alt-ctrl games closed a Berlin summer school
Press Play capped a month of hardware-and-play experiments at School of Machines, with Niklas Roy, Chloe Desmoineaux, and Lorenzo Pilia among the instructors.
On July 31, the fifth floor of ACUD Kunst Haus in Berlin filled up with games you play by grabbing something that was soldered the week before. Press Play! was the closing exhibition of a monthlong summer program at School of Machines, Making & Make-Believe, Rachel Uwa's art-and-technology school, and the premise is the thing I keep turning over: the alternative controller taught as coursework, not stumbled into at a game jam.
The announcement lists works from eight students—Alexa Barboza, Alicia García Muñoz, Bertha Elena Artero Ponce, Didre Schutte, Némo Quehen, Nicholas Markus, Selma Laura Köran, and Simon Jaramillo Vallejo—but the faculty list is telling. Media artist Niklas Roy, whose machines have been charming Berlin for two decades, taught alongside artist Chloé Desmoineaux, electronics artist Kati Hyyppä, Berlin games-scene fixture Lorenzo Pilia, Lislis, and producer kidkanevil covering sound for games. That is a working scene donating its people to a classroom.
This is the part that interests me. With the exception of Brooklyn's Wonderville, Alt-ctrl games have always been festival creatures—built for one weekend, played by whoever queued. We covered a game controlled by a real floppy disk back in 2016, and just this month an A MAZE award reminded me how much of this practice still routes through Berlin. A school program is different infrastructure: it means the form gets a pipeline, a syllabus, and a cohort of eight new people every summer who think a controller is something you make.
The show ran one evening, July 31, and it has passed. The cohort is the story anyway. Watch the names.
Killscreen has covered games you play with your hands, your feet, and one real floppy disk since 2010. The free newsletter is where the next controller-shaped idea shows up first.
