Bundith Phunsom-batlert is playing God. It may not occur to you at first as you enter Bangkok University's art gallery, where his show is continuing until December 16. It looks like someone's in the process of opening a new video-game arcade.

But the 34-year-old isn't interested in just a shrine to Pong, the classic table-tennis game. Players controlling the paddles are well advised to soak in the whole picture and see where they fit in.

The interactive installation is called "On the Ball (The Game Has Begun. 'Beware Crossing the Grid')". It involves humour as well as satire, but you can be lulled into mystification by the droll instructions.

"This game can be played either by a single player pitted against a computerised opponent, or by two players each controlling a paddle."

Bundith, a Silpakorn University post-graduate, says he chose Pong because it's so well known and it puts people in conflict. The world today is in chaos because of war and politics, he reminds us while forcing us to question our own contributions to the mess.

The gallery is dimly lit except for a pair of huge screens suspended in the centre that show what's happening at the glowering Pong tables. This is where you have to start guessing at what's real and what's not.

You're watching people battle it out on a Pong field, the blips of the ball hypnotic. You could just as easily be watching a CNN report about night-time air strikes in the Gulf War, Bundith points out. That's a simulation too.

Also watching the game enthusiastically is a crowd of virtual spectators. Twelve TVs piled in rows show them following every back and forth of the ball. Their reactions have been painstakingly pre-programmed to fixate on the movement.

The "bleachers" resemble church pews.

"I'm a Catholic," Bundith says. "I go to church with my mother every Sunday. The crises we face today - involving anything from 9/11 to the violent attacks in southern Thailand - are sometimes caused by misinterpretations of religion.

"And the gallery is in the same building as the International College, so I wanted to give visitors of different ages, backgrounds and religious beliefs something to ponder."

God's hand on the control mechanisms of life does indeed come into question when millions around the world suffer. Our individual roles as cogs in the machine, in the interplay of cause and effect, can't be ignored.

As in life, you don't have to be directly playing the game to be involved. As soon as you approach the hanging screens and step on a rubber grid, sensors relay your movements to the screens in the form of small yellow cubes, just like the blocks in Pong that can help or hinder a competitor. In fact, you've just become an obstruction yourself.

"Your appearance can affect the result," Bundith warns. "It's as if you've entered a battlefield unintentionally. You immediately become the object that everyone's looking at - both the simulated audience on the television sets and all the people in the hall. Your status has changed from observer to player."

This is the artist who shook up some people overseas in 1999 with his bitter take on truth and illusion. He sold "Ready-made Human Products" at the Asia-Pacific Triennial in Brisbane, Australia.

Observers stepped up to his chrome vendor's cart and found themselves shopping for human faces and other body parts, all tagged with bar codes and priced to move.

They were moulded from plastic, but the point was made.

Two years ago Bundith savaged rampant consumerism in "Landscape: Transmitting Thoughts". It had a walkway formed of two rows of lampposts, looking for all the world like a scene around Sanam Luang, minus the pigeons.

At the base of each post was a keyboard. You typed out a message and it appeared in the glass lamps above, chattering away in red, tickertape-style, like an advertisement.

The idea was that the lampposts are usually for making us feel safe in the dark, while the red text messages reflected the insecurities of the commercial world.

Whether you're the winner or loser at Bundith's Pong, upon leaving the gallery you may find that reality really isn't as much fun as its virtual cousin.

The gallery on Bangkok University's Kluay Nam Thai campus is open Tuesday to Saturday from 9.30am to 7pm. Call (02) 350 3626.

Khetsirin Pholdhampalit

 The Nation