Scrapyard Challenge Arcade Controller ReDesign Workshop

Interactive workshop that allows anyone to create a novel controller for classic arcade games using a custom-built interface board.

Date: Mar. 25

Time: 2-5pm

Location: Center for Design, Ryder Hall 180

Address: 11 Leon St. Boston

Led by Jonah Brucker-Cohen, “Scrapyard Challenge: Classic Arcade Game Controller Redesign Workshop" is an interactive experience that allows anyone to create a novel controller for classic arcade games using a custom-built interface board and Raspberry Pi computers running Retropie Software.

The Scrapyard Challenge workshops are intense workshops designed by Jonah Brucker-Cohen and Katherine Moriwaki, ranging in duration from all day to several hours that focus on interface design through the use of found objects and junk materials. Since they began in 2003, the Scrapyard Challenge workshops have been held in 17 countries across the five continents of North America, South America, Europe, Australia, and Asia.

The workshops began as a way of introducing interface design to novices without the need to learn electronics by supplying a custom built interface board that people could simply “plug” homemade switches and analog controllers into to create custom MIDI controllers, wearable devices, or public art installations.

As the cost of game emulation decreased from standard computers such as Macs and PCs to microcomputers such as the Raspberry Pi, the workshop has evolved with these changes over its 20 year history and now allows for participants to build game controllers for classic games and consoles such as Super Mario Brothers (Nintendo Entertainment System), Street Fighter (Multiple Machine Arcade Emulator or MAME), Crash Bandicoot (PlayStation 1), and many other home arcade systems.

The Classic Arcade Controller Redesign Workshop was started by Jonah Brucker-Cohen and Sebastian Bidegain during the fall of 2022 and has been many times run in 3 countries since then.

This event is co-sponsored by the Northeastern Department of Art + Design, the EXCITE Institute and the Center for Design.

Speaker Bio:
Jonah Brucker-Cohen is an artist, writer, and Associate Professor at Lehman College / CUNY. He received his Ph.D. from Trinity College Dublin and his artwork has been exhibited at venues such as SFMOMA, Canadian Museum of Contemporary Art, MOMA, ICA London, Whitney Museum of American Art, Palais du Tokyo, Tate Modern, Ars Electronica, Transmediale, and more. His writing has appeared in publications such as WIRED and Make and his Scrapyard Challenge workshops have been held in over 15 countries on 5 continents.