everything digital is analog again

You might want to file Super Mario Kart THE BOARD GAME under must-haves of 2010. (It’s from the 2010 Tokoyo Toy Show and not available here yet.) I saw it after a story about the prototype for a digital version of the decidedly analog Holga. Yeah, that funky little *film* camera favored by a lot of people on Flickr. Industrial designer Saikat Biswas did something different and open-sourced the project too.

The feedback so far? Overwhelmingly positive, as in, “WHERE CAN I GET THAT?” positive. Turns out, nowhere for now as it’s not yet in production, but if it were, doesn’t it look like something Apple designed? The lines are iPhone sleek with a minimalist execution of form, function and features.

It raises a deeper issue though about the things we grew up with in one medium being reinterpreted for another. That game immediately evokes the same feelings as the Holga D crowd have: GOTTA HAVE IT. Imagine Space Invaders, the card game! But would Holga going digital be a bad thing?

Almost the entire analog film industry has crossed over into the digital realm, no? Maybe it’s bad because Holga fans don’t want to lose the analog charm and imperfections of the light-leaking original. Could Photoshop-like effects ever match the charm of a distorted color field?

The proposed design does a good job of melding both worlds together in another aspect: There’s no monitor to preview what you shot. Like the film you drop off at Walgreen’s, you have to wait until you download your images to see how they came out. Lost in digital translation these past few years has been this anticipation you used to have with film as the shots revealed themselves.

There was nothing as creepy and cool as watching a shaken Polaroid in your hand turn into something from nothing. Each piece was some kind of original piece of art that you hated throwing away. (I love iGod, but sorry, it’s one tactile experience that touchscreens can never emulate.)

Not to mention the thinking and planning that used to go into shooting as you were more aware of how you composed your shots. Now it’s shoot from the hip, check the screen and delete what you don’t want. But on the other hand, the digital migration of consumer technology away from analog is certainly the democratization the Polaroids and Kodaks of the world had intended, no? Pictures for everyone—by everyone. People have so much access to cheaper ways of expressing themselves, who cares what medium they do it in.

And so when I see the board game above, and then the digital Holga, both seem like contradictions in terms of the mediums people first experienced them in. But both work because your feelings about each are just as intense. In this case, it’s not a matter of one technology giving way to another. It’s about one supporting the other.