Originally developed for Probador de Poesías (2025), a festival hosted by Barrio Berlín at Lettretage, and subsequently presented at Dispatch Vol. 1 at Pixel Forest, this interactive Pac-Man game by Stephanie Fernandes and Mayara Stelmaschuk Melo transforms the familiar arcade interface into a poetry machine. Built in TouchDesigner and controlled via SNES joystick, the game invites visitors to guide Pac-Man through a maze where, instead of dots, the character consumes words. The sequence of words eaten, determined by each player's path, assembles into a poem. No two players produce the same text.
Use arrow keys (desktop) or swipe / touch buttons (mobile) to move Pac-Man one cell at a time. Each word you eat is added to your poem on the side. Eat all 48 words to reveal your complete poem. Toggle between Portuguese and English at any time — switching languages changes which poem you build.
Stephanie Fernandes (@ste.fern) is a Brazilian poet, linguist and translator based in Berlin. Stephanie is interested in how household objects, means of transportation, games and electricity make up history at different scales, and works with audiovisual experiments. She has been published in Germany, in magazines and the anthology RE/VERSIONEN (Neofelis, 2024). In 2024, her Bahn poem was presented at the Bibliothek der Hochschule für Bildende Künste (HfbK), Hamburg, and, in 2025, she read at the Internationalen Literaturfestival Berlin as one of the representatives of the Latin American literary scene in the city. She translated Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf and Emily Brontë.
Mayara Stelmaschuk Melo (@maya___knits) is a Brazilian coder, knitter and video artist based in Berlin. She contributed to knitting a dress designed by CRUBA for Donata Wenders for the 2024 Oscars, for Wim Wenders' Perfect Days Best International Film nomination. In recent years, she has been experimenting with TouchDesigner, game design and Knitting Machine using Raspberry Pi and AYAB, with work featured in the 50g exhibition at Kindl.