New York University held the 2009 Spring Show for its Interactive Telecommunications Program last weekend, inviting anyone interested to a "festival of interactive sight, sound, and technology" projects from its student artists. The curious works on display ranged from a wind responsive LED screen to a taxidermied squirrel that removes its own head at sunset, waiting until sunrise to put it back on.

DIY-site Make attended the two-day event and shot the above video, which includes a couple clips of the show's game projects. The program's students showed off over a dozen pieces with game elements, five of which we've picked out with media to share with you!

Ant Warz by Oscar Von Hauske and Vitaliy Dikker

In this tabletop real-time strategy game, up to four players control a colony of ants with "colored LED finger-wearable devices." To survive against competing armies, players need to grow their colony, exercise their ants, and send their soldiers into battles.

Urban Alpinist by Anderson Miller

Teams compete against each other to get to the highest points possible in a city in this "microlocative" game. A special iPhone application and a device that measures barometric pressure records how high players are, and after the teams register three heights, the groups can view their accomplishments in a Google Earth visualization.

Tuuug-of-War by Nobu Nakaguchi

This deafening multiplayer project has two teams of up to three people each yelling "TUUUUUG" as loud as possible into mobile phones, with the noisier group winning a game of tug of war between monsters displayed on a big screen. The installation takes a photo of the winners, which it then pastes on the monsters, posts on a website, and sends to the players with an SMS link.

SimSnails by Craig Kapp

SimSnails aims to help users "learn about and experiment with the concept of natural selection" with an augmented reality setup that brings to life a colony of 3D snails that "live, breed and get eaten by predators". Waving cards with printed symbols in front of a video camera help affect the colony's landscape, reproduction cycle, and rate of mutation.

WikiPaths by Alex Abreu and Tim Szetela

WikiPaths is a Greasemonkey Firefox Add-on that acts as a scavenger hunt played across Wikipedia.org. This casual game challenges players to "find the shortest path between two, seemingly unconnected, encyclopedic entries" on the website.