Click on one of the four cities where you want to dance and play!!!
 Broadway Boogie Woogie Music by Boogie Woogie Trio |  Detroit Techno Music by Anonym |
 Toronto Techno Music by Jeff Milligan |  Tokyo Techno Music by Mitsuaki Komamura |
Pac-Mondrian closes the perceptual distance between fine art and video games by combining Piet Mondrian's Modernist masterpiece 'Broadway Boogie Woogie' with Toru Iwatani's classic video game Pac-Man. The two new Ms. Pac-Mondrian levels return the painting to the dance clubs that inspired it with music by contemporary techno musicians mapping the birth of electronic music in their home towns.
When Piet Mondrian arrived in New York in 1940, he heard the Boogie Woogie pianoof Meade Lux Lewis, Albert Ammons, and Pete Johnson, and from then on refused to dance to any other jazz, leaving the floor in ahuff if the music didn't boogie.
Afteryears of completely abstract work he abandoned the black grid to useyellow lines and red, blue, and grey colour blocks to build arepresentation of New York infused with all the vibrant kinetic energyof raucous road-house piano blues in 'Broadway Boogie Woogie'.
Pac-Mondriantranscodes 'Broadway Boogie Woogie' into a Pac-Man video game: thepainting becomes the board, the music becomes the sound effects, andPiet Mondrian becomes Pac-Man.
Pac-Mondrian disciplinesthe syncopated rhythms of Mondrian's spatial arrangements into aregular grid, then frees the gaze to follow the viewer's whimsicalperambulations of the painting: a player's thorough study of thepainting clears the level.
Each play of the game is an actof devotion. Mondrian's geometric spirituality fuses with his ecstaticphysicality when Pac-Mondrian dances around the screen while theTrinity of Boogie Woogie jazz play 'Boogie Woogie Prayer'.
Eachplay of the game is an improvisational jazz session. Pac-Mondrian sitsin as a session drummer with Ammons, Lewis, and Johnson, hittinghi-hats, cymbals, and snares as he eats pellets.
Pac-Mondrian was adapted from source code found at Benny Chow's home page.
Play the original Namco Pac-Man games. View Pac-Man screen shot.
See the original 'Broadway Boogie Woogie' at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Listen to the original boogie woogie music of Albert Ammons, Meade Lux Lewis, and Pete Johnson.
Listen to the original techno music of Jeff Milligan, and Anonym.