Panorama Music Festival

Pinball Performance

Playing pinball is as much a game as it is a performance. People come to watch, they offer advice, they ooh and ahh when you hit the rare pins. We made a project that amplifies these moments.

Pinball performance centers around an untouched classic Gottlieb 1974 electromechanical pinball cabinet called TopCard. Many of these beautiful old mechanical games are unused, sitting in warehouses or in disrepair. We want to encourage a new use for vintage pinball machines- as art pieces.

We installed sensors inside this vintage machine so that we could use all the pins, plungers and flipper-hits to trigger artful animations on monitors positioned around the machine.

As you play the pinball machine, art and sound begin to surround you. Each pin you hit builds ever more intense animations. Colors change, new art emerges, all matching the intensity of your gameplay. This art system turns you into a virtuoso performer, creating art for the crowd around you.

Pinball performance debuted at Panorama Music Festival, Randalls Island, NY - and has traveled to the HP conference in Boston MA, with more destinations in the works.