Retro Reboot is an exhibit for the exhibition Data Spaces in our university. It allows visitors to create their own punch stripes. The punch stripes are scanned and interpreted to perform a calculation, to generate an image or to play some music.
The image generation simply puts the holes on to a grid and runs Conways Game of Life on them.
In the calculation module, the punch stripe input is interpreted according to the original “Fernmeldealphabet” from the D4A. Each column is either a number or calculation symbol. One after another, the columns are read and evaluated. The display shows the input and the current result.
The music is created by interpreting the punch stripe as a drum machine and playing an audio sample whenever a hole is present. The display shows a simple visualization of the audio currently playing.