1D Mini
Completed · first year project
1D Mini is a complete video game played on a single line of LEDs.
The project began with one creative constraint: what would a video game become if its entire visual world had to exist in the first dimension?
The device
A single strip of addressable LEDs is the entire display. A single button is the entire input. Sound comes from a passive buzzer. The electronics sit visibly inside an acrylic wedge, so the whole machine can be read at a glance.
It was conceived after playing Pac-Man following lectures, and built through iterative code tested directly on the hardware, where small changes in timing, colour and movement transformed how the game felt.
The complete device, lit. The built object is shown in colour.
What it taught me
Constraint is a creative tool. Reducing the interface to one line and one button made every interaction deliberate, and taught me how much expression can come from binary input. It is the clearest early evidence of the human interface thread that runs through everything since.
Iterating game behaviour in code at the bench.
Reflection
A one dimensional world still produces tension, rhythm and joy. Imagination does not need many pixels.
Button, breadboard and battery visible in the acrylic.
bennett harris
Systems Artist
Working across objects, infrastructure and machine intelligence.