Story Machines, Case Mods and Ghost Horses

Story Machines, Case Mods and Ghost Horses

Residency exhibition at Videotage in Hong Kong, curated by Angel Leung, supported by Stimuleringsfonds

During a 3 month residency at Videotage in Hong Kong, Schimmel explored the city through a lineup of handheld gaming and media devices spanning different technological eras—from 36-year-old Game Boys to a pachinko machine and a video-enabled radio. Each platform became a speculative lens through which to navigate urban space: not simply as a user, but as a modder, storyteller, and hauntologist of technology.

Two custom Game Boy cartridges emerged from collaborations that linked landscape, community, and interface. In Lu Fu Shan Hike, Schimmel led a hike to a Hong Kong mountaintop, where participants created pixel-art interpretations of the view, compressing real-world vastness into the Game Boy’s 160×144-pixel screen. The second cartridge titled Lift Broken, developed in collaboration with Hong Kong based art collective B-Complex, transforms their shared workshop building into a playable miniature world. Each cartridge was housed in its own vacuum-formed packaging, a sculptural nod to both the collectible object and the industrial lifecycle of tech commodities.

Play games and download roms here

Fist of the North Star, Schimmel’s modified pachinko machine, extends this reimagining of device logic. Originally designed to flood the player with lights, sound, and high-intensity reward, this particular unit features a Fist of the North Star theme, with a plastic figurine of its protagonist Kenshiro embedded in its physical decoration. For the piece, Schimmel created a custom game featuring a custom-made 3D model of the figurine. Kenshiro, typically portrayed as explosively violent and hyper-masculine, is instead shown quietly wandering through a living room, watching TV, and sitting on a couch. In this deliberate refusal of action, Schimmel subverts the machine’s dopamine-driven design intention, reframing it as a space of inertia, tenderness, and interruption.

Schimmel’s interest in subversion and mediated experience also unfolds in City Tweaking Roaming, a stereoscopic video diary recorded on a 2011 Nintendo 3DS. Across a series of handheld scenes shot in and around Hong Kong, visual interventions—some subtle, others overt—appear: a demon lounging in a massage chair, a swarm of butterflies drifting through the MTR, strange appearances rendered in low-resolution 3DS graphics. These layered insertions play with perception, hinting at the uncanny ways devices filter, distort, and augment our sense of place.

Throughout the exhibition, the ghost—鬼 (gwái)—is both subject and strategy. In Cantonese, gwái runs through language: from 鬼佬 (gwáilóu, "ghost man," i.e. foreigner), to 鬼馬 (gwáimá, “ghost-horse,” meaning mischievous or clever), to 整鬼整馬 (jíng gwái jíng má, “making ghosts and horses,” meaning to mess around, prank, or cause playful disruption). Schimmel draws on this linguistic richness as a conceptual framework, weaving together local idioms, folklore, and fictional hauntings.
Helen Feeling began with a radio-TV player found in a street market stall. Later, while hiking, Schimmel encountered an old man tuned into the horse races on a similar device. In Hong Kong, horse racing is both pastime and industry, and because Schimmel lived close to the racetrack he became interested in the events. For this piece, he used public recordings of the races he attended, then digitally inserted a spectral figure: a demon riding a ghost horse, charging alongside the real competitors. The broadcast was completed with text-to-speech–generated commentary that folded the ghost horse into the live race.

Across modded Game Boys, 3DS dioramas, a haunted pachinko machine, and the demon-horse broadcast, Story Machines, Case Mods and Ghost Horses sets up a kind of séance for dead or half-alive technologies. Schimmel draws on local participation and speculative storytelling, working through obsolete devices to tease out the residues they carry—ghosts of memory, mischief, and myth that still run through the handheld forms of past and present.

B-Complex members
Johnny Au, Lynna Lam, Blair Lam , Sofie Leung, Momo Ma, Emma Yeung, Ariel Yuen

Lu Fu Shan Hike participants
Leo, OrangeTerry, Roberto Mabalot, Shan, Sunny Chow, tungh0ng.

Special thanks to
Helena Parys
V54
CHRYSALIS - HKBU Art Tech Incubation Hub
Fablab Hong Kong
Mr. Kwok
Uncle South

Digital assets used
Demon Screamer3D model by 3DCULT
Livingroom Vol. 13D model by Unimodels
Movement sequencesby Adobe Mixamo
Kenshiro by Helena Parys
Jolie by voronzov
Hands v2 by VertexZone
Goblin low reliefby Aleksey Vorontsov
Moths Flutteringby Jazz Vincent

Freeware used
Blender
GB Studio
FFmpeg

Game roms can be downloaded on
https://janneschimmel.itch.io/

3D models can be downloaded on
https://www.thingiverse.com/jannesch/designs