I visited Computerspielemuseum shortly after the opening, at the beginning of this year. I am not a regular user of this kind of games and not exactly a high-tech person (for example, it took me a - long - while to find in my smartphone the notes I've made during the visit), only curious to see the place and the idea(s) behind. My obsessive observation about Germany and 2.0 is that, in fact, people are extremely good at the theoretical level but on the ground, the practice is extremely limited. For me, this is still a mystery I am trying to explore.
But, back to the museum. It was a(nother) rainy cold Sunday and I needed a lot of perseverance to go out of my Western home direction Karl-Marx-Allee. Which is not exactly the kind of ambiance I like to hang out - day or night, summer or winter. I was a bit annoyed by the thought that I will need to waste my time around, but the friendly signs at the U-Bahn helped me to reach my destination in less than 7 minutes.
The museum is located in a white-grey building from the above-named Allee, with a very similar design to the buildings you'll find in the former Soviet East and Russia. It looks like an old shop with nothing to find, or like the headquarters of an old unnamed institutions, where if you will take the risk of knocking you might be "welcomed" by a kalashnikov guy. Anyway, maybe my imagination is going too too far. As you can see from the picture, the place dedicated to the exhibition is only at one level - even I wished I to be surprise by an idea of creative design. Nothing by far: a very usual setting of objects, a chronological history of computer games - from the dungeons and dragons to various chess games or games created during the Cold War - not all of them available for playing. The limited space was used for rising various boxes and walls, organizing the space vertically. Still, it was quite annoying to move from a place to another and the kids were impatiently waiting in line to play their games. In many respects, I had the impression of being very back in the time of my childhood and youth: old computers, with the old sound of second generation games (the old versions of Tetris or Super Mario), joysticks and lots of black on the screens. Very few super 3D heroes and virtual entertainment. It was like trying to rediscover old habits and reflexes we forgot about because we upgraded our level. It is one of the reasons of a possible disappointment after visiting this place: we are used to be highly mobile and active, with multi-tasking attention skills. And this might be the advantage or the disadvantage of this museum. Anyway, I deeply hope that little by little there will be some changes...
Here are a couple of pictures from the exhibition:
I loved the nice colours and the graffiti-like wall decorations, very often more interesting than the content.
T
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen