I wasn't sure what to expect when I walked into the art.tech festival this past weekend in San Francisco's Mission District. From the program description, it sounded like a nerdy fusion of art, technology, and video games, similar to the Maker Faire I visited earlier this year. But where would they fit something like that in the Mission?

It turned out that art.tech operated on a much smaller scale than the Maker Faire -- but it was nevertheless packed full of wacky awesomeness. In the middle of the room, for example, hung a bunch of large gourds, hollowed out and fitted with speakers. Across from them was a "gourd mic" -- speak into it and your voice came out deeply distorted from the speakers. It sounded a bit like the Abominable Snowman on the Matterhorn ride at Disneyland.

Near the gourds dangled a group of long plastic tubes. When you walked through them, soothing sounds would begin to play, as if you were a human wind chime.

In another area, a remote control car with a Sharpie marker attached to it raced around in an enclosed pen. The artist had rigged the car to respond to noise, and it would create all sorts of psychedelic doodles on the ground as it reacted to the sounds from three mics surrounding it.

There were plenty of video games on display, too, from artists and tinkerers intent on pushing games in new directions. Read on to learn about hobo controllers, GPS-based Scrabble, and cooperative jazz hands.

Saturday, 1 p.m. -- Fluxly

After browsing the exhibits for a while, I sat down to watch Shawn Wallace demo Fluxly. Wallace bills Fluxly as a "wizard duel," but the main focus of the game is really the controllers -- because with Fluxly, you make your own controller. Think Project Natal is revolutionary? Try using Wallace's "hobo controller," constructed from a cigar box and a handful of pennies. If hobo controllers aren't your thing, pick up a MIDI keyboard, a hamster ball fitted with IR sensors, a Wii Remote, or some other contraption of your own design. Basically, anything you can rig up to a microcontroller is fair game.

The primary strategy when constructing your controller is to determine your play style, in the same way that someone chooses Sagat in Street Fighter because they really like throwing fireballs. Do you want to be defensive, or do you want to launch a flurry of attacks as soon as the game starts? In total, 128 possible actions can be controlled in Fluxly, ranging from antigravity to lightning to a strong wind. Which ones you choose to use is up to you.

Wallace's aim is to use Fluxly to get kids interested in electronics on the sly. As they cobble together their ideal controllers with soldering irons, they won't even realize that they're learning about math and science.

I tried out the game with a premade hobo controller against a merciless opponent -- the one 12-year-old kid in the audience. I beat him a few times, but once he learned how to spam lightning and wind, he killed my cute little Fluxly character over and over again.

Oh well. If it inspires him to go home and pick up a soldering iron, then I'm glad he kicked my ass.

Saturday, 5 p.m. -- Seek 'n Spell

After a break in festivities, I headed back to art.tech to hear about Seek 'n Spell, a GPS-based spelling game for the iPhone.

Wait, what kind of game? Developer Retronyms gave us a brief overview, but since Seek 'n Spell is something best understood through experience, we soon headed over to nearby Dolores Park for a live demonstration.

I'll do my best to explain it here: Seek 'n Spell plays out like a life-size version of Scrabble, with any open area serving as the game board. On your screen is an aerial map with letters superimposed on it. You and other players appear as colored dots. Once everyone syncs up their phones, the timer starts and the game begins. Using your GPS, you have to run to the various letters in order to spell out words. You don't have to spell them in order -- you can bank up to 10 letters at a time. The length of the words you spell determines the amount of points you get.

It sounds simple enough, but in reality Nature is a cruel AI director. The number of obstacles we had to navigate while running with our eyes glued to the iPhone screen makes Ikaruga look like a cakewalk. Hills, hidden muddy patches, tennis courts, dog crap, hipsters drinking Tecate, jocks tossing around a football -- all of them stood between us and our letters. Couple that with GPS interference and a slow-to-respond network, and grabbing a letter that appeared to be just inches from you could be a surprisingly difficult affair.

But it was still great fun. I love how Seek 'n Spell combines so many disparate elements: it's an exercise game, a spelling game, a multiplayer game, a fun reminder of days spent running around as a carefree kid. If you and your friends have iPhones (or Android phones), check this game out.

And FYI: I salvaged my gamer pride from earlier by winning two out of three matches. Although maybe that was just because there were no kids around this time.

Sunday, 4 p.m. -- Silhouettes

The final game-related session was for something called Silhouettes. Created by Nick Lally, Silhouettes is a cooperative game using two cameras to track motion. The demo provided a little preview of what we'll all be doing in our living rooms once Project Natal hits.

And what we'll be doing, apparently, is making a lot "jazz hands" motions. The point of Silhouettes is for you and your teammate to align your silhouettes in order catch falling blue balls while avoiding red ones. Ideally this involves teamwork, but for the demo at art.tech most people resorted to flailing their hands like Al Jolson on a bad acid trip.

Bitmobber James Cotellesse is right: This technology looks just like the green-screen shenanigans that aired on Nickelodeon more than 15 years ago. If somebody doesn't create a version of Nick Arcade when Natal is released, I'm going to be extremely disappointed.