Gamer Keyboard Wall Piece #1 & #2
Concept:
The Gamer Keyboard Wall Piece series uses the visual language of gamer subculture to give the online gamer stereotype a new political identity. The RGB-lit keys become pixels, turning an input device into a display medium.
#1 (2021): Four keyboards show a poem about loneliness, anxiety and NEET life.
#2 (2025): Nine keyboards display animations mixing internet culture history with feminist theory on contemporary adolescent masculinity.
My contribution:
I built the software that converts video into keyboard light. A web app maps keyboard layouts onto a canvas, samples each video frame pixel-by-pixel at the LED coordinates, and encodes the colors into a custom binary protocol that matches Jelle's hardware. A Raspberry Pi plays the result back over SPI in real time.
Credits:
Artist: Sjef van Beers.
Software: Ibo Ibelings.
Hardware: Jelle Reith.
Hardware assistance (#2): Sjoerd Mol.