My safecracking game ‘Scrooge’ from LACMA Halloween made an appearance at the December 2009 Mindshare event. It was installed on the rooftop of the Downtown Independent theater in Los Angeles with a great view of the skyline.
Since LACMA I re-engineered the door-release mechanism to be more powerful and reliable and it has worked like a charm since.The prize inside was a bowl of candycanes and mini Kit Kats and people enjoyed trying to crack it.
I was invited to show some projects at the LA County Museum of Art for their Muse Costume Ball, in conjunction with Mindshare Labs. We had an entire gallery in the Arts of America Building for the night and showed upwards of 15 interactive explorations.
I brought the Contours Laser Obelisk but also debuted a work-in-progress safecracking game called “Scrooge”.
“Scrooge” is a cabinet I built designed to look like a cartoony safe. It has a large dollar sign on top which serves as both a scoreboard for the game and an exagerrated symbol of the concept of a secure moneybox (a la Scrooge McDuck). The safe has both a front and back door that serves as the playing surface. Each player (red and blue) tries to open the safe by turning the dial to find the three unknown numbers in the combination. three LEDs on the door flash at varying speeds to indicate how close they are to the unknown number. The dollar sign on top shows lights for both players so everyone can see how close each player is to winning.