Sonata Per Mario

Mario Bros. is one of the most famous video games of all times, and an icon of the video game culture. More than 20 years after its creation, it is still marketed by Nintendo itself, licensed to other companies and subverted or re-used by numerous artists.
A good example of a legal recuperation is the Super Mario Bros. series of the so-called Soundrops made by Bandai.
The Soundrops are small drop-shaped colored plastic key holders containing an IC, a power supply and a speaker. They feature a single large round-shaped push button and each Soundrop emits a short sound sample when pressed. In the case of the Super Mario Bros. series, the sound samples are taken from the video game.
The project dubbed Sonata per Mario aims at pushing further the use of detournement (an anglicization of the French word "détournement" that could be translated as subversion) and recuperation through DIY and lo-tech hacking techniques.
In Sonata per Mario, both the game Super Mario Bros. and the related Soundrop series are re-used to create a new game that in turn can be seen as a detournement of the game Taiko Drum Master.
The players use the eight Soundrops of the Super Mario Bros. series as an eight-buttons controller for a game based on pre-recorded plays of Super Mario Bros.. The pre-recorded plays have been stripped of the sound and the goal of the game is to reconstruct it through the use of the Soundrops, in perfect synchronization with the actions of the character Mario. Players earn points by pressing the correct Soundrop button at the right instant.

Sonata per Mario features a list of the highest scores and the possibility for the player to enter his/her name when a high score is achieved. Moreover, it has two levels of difficulty. At the normal level of difficulty, visual indications are provided to help the player to be perfectly synchronized with the action of Mario. At the hard level of difficulty, such indications are not provided and the player must rely only on his/her anticipation of the actions of Mario.

The Soundrops are similar to a musical instrument and the pre-recorded video to the score.

Artist Statement

In addition to the sheer entertainment value of the project when considered as a game, Sonata per Mario is a reflexion on the practice of recuperation by companies and the similar practice of detournement through hacking and DIY techniques by hobbyists and artists.
The Soundrops can be classified as merchandising and as such, products of recuperation. At the same time, the object itself is an original and creative product that yet cannot be dissociated of the original product to which it is related. Without its reference, the pertinence of the object is lost.
Sonata per Mario re-uses (or hacks, "détourne") an already recuperated merchandising product (the Soundrops) to become an original game that is itself a detournement of existing video games.
Morover, by emitting sound samples of the video game, the Soundrops trigger memories of the original video game. Sonata per Mario acts in a similar but extended way than the Soundrops by making people interact with a representation of the video game (pre-recorded plays) that is incomplete. The audience becomes more of a restorer than a consumer that must call on his/her own memories to keep Mario alive.

Technical Statement
Sonata per Mario was developed using an Arduino board to connect the Soundrops to a computer running an application written with OpenFrameworks. The players interact with the game through the Soundrops as a controller/instrument and are presented with a display showing the game/score.
The Soundrops are suspended such as the game can be easily played by the audience.

Media
Flickr set.

Acknowledgement
Many thanks to Alvaro Cassinelli and Monica Bressaglia for their help, valuable comments and inspiration, and to Thomas for showing me my first Soundrop.

Exhibitions
2010.06.27-07.13 @ Mario Viva, Hong-Kong.
2009.05.24 @ Make: Tokyo Meeting 03, Tokyo.
2008.07.26 @ Dorkbot Tokyo, Yokohama