TFT Tennis

A virtual tennis match with a twist: monitors become the racquets. A virtual tennis match with a twist: monitors become the racquets. Players get into position to return the balls hit to them by moving the monitors to the left or right. Changing the angle of the monitor changes the path of the ball. The view and perspective of the player on the virtual center court also change in correspondence to these movements.

TFT Tennis proposes a contemporary re-imagining of one of the medium’s archetypal experiences: electronic tennis. In the interface two players play tennis using flat screens mounted on steel beams, which act as both the primary three-dimensional interface and virtual rackets that can be manipulated and rotated to determine the direction of the virtual ball. Four position sensors process the player’s on-screen movement, tracking his or her path across the virtual playing field. TFT Tennis recalls the pioneering experimentation in electronic tennis in exploring new forms of screen-based interaction that would range from Willie Higginbotham’s oscilloscope-driven “Tennis for Two” to Ralph Baer’s 1968 invention of home video game consoles with the Brown Box (1968), Magnavox Odyssey (1972), and Atari’s “Pong” (1972), the first successful arcade game. A tradition continued by the Nintendo Wii with its wireless racket-shaped controllers. However, none of those primitive exercises can compare to this dizzyingly disorienting 'experiment', which reconciles electronic tennis with its non-electronic roots as a physical experience.

Photos taken at Gameworld exhibition in Gijon and WIRED NextFest Los Angeles.