I present to you Project Blinkenlights, probably one of the coolest things I have ever seen.
People familiar with the CCC (Chaos Computer Club), which I guess outside Germany are not that many, and Tim Pritlove should know about this, but I think most of you don't, so I really think this deserves to be on Teamliquid. TL is all about awesomeness after all :p
They basically take a building and turn the windows into computer screen pixels (and allow people to play games on it among other things). With each project it gets more and more awesome, so far they have done three installations. The first one in Berlin in 2001-02 (which they repeated a few times in the same way). The other two were part of Nuit Blanche events (all night cultural events) in Paris and Toronto respectively.
I don't wanna talk about it too much, since I'm rather lazy, so I'm just going to provide you with videos and pictures:
First installation, 2001, Berlin: Blinkenlights
Second installation, 2002, Paris: Blinkenlights Arcade
Third installation, 2008, Toronto: Blinkenlights Stereoscope
Tim Pritlove, one of the heads behind it, also did an hour long presentation at the Chaos Communication Congress in December 2008 (the third video from above is part of the presentation if I remember correctly), with loads of background information and how everything works. Really interesting! You can watch it here. The embedded video is apparently not seekable (at least it isn't for me), but they also offer it as a direct download which is seekable.
this is really cool. the idea is practical and theoretically simple but i can imagine so ridiculously difficult to put together and pull off. props to these guys, true experts at technology and art
I really want to encourage people to watch/download the presentation linked towards the end of the post, I found ot really interesting. Like they actually built wireless lamp controllers for the last installation.
ACHTUNG! ALLES TURISTEN UND NONTEKNISCHEN LOOKENPEEPERS! DAS KOMPUTERMASCHINE IST NICHT FÜR DER GEFINGERPOKEN UND MITTENGRABEN! ODERWISE IST EASY TO SCHNAPPEN DER SPRINGENWERK, BLOWENFUSEN UND POPPENCORKEN MIT SPITZENSPARKSEN. IST NICHT FÜR GEWERKEN BEI DUMMKOPFEN. DER RUBBERNECKEN SIGHTSEEREN KEEPEN DAS COTTONPICKEN HÄNDER IN DAS POCKETS MUSS. ZO RELAXEN UND WATSCHEN DER BLINKENLICHTEN
BlinkenLichten!! jeje LOL witty , love the pun, I am sure they chose that name on purpose. Very old school stuff.
Anyway, my feedback as usual:
- if u don't like jmj scroll to minute 5 or watch first minute or so of part 2
I know it's not the same thing, but probably the initial inspiration. I was there in person too : ) good times : ) 5/5 anyway for the nostalgia this post evoked in my memory.
Yeah, the name is based on that instruction, it's mentioned on the project's website
As for whether Rendezvous Houston was the initial inspiration - I don't know, but I don't think so. Rendezvous Houston simply used huge single projections from the outside as far as I understand, that's very different from individually lighting windows from the inside. That being said, Time Pritlove mentioned somewhere (don't remember if it was in one of the youtube videos or in the presentation or somewhere totally different, because I've watched/listened to quite a lot of stuff of him) that of course they were not the first ones to use computers to control lighting of individual windows and certainly wouldn't claim to have invented it. The scope of their operation, including writing software with which people could create their own animations and so much other cool stuff is what makes it special. Everything they did was published in open source afterwards btw
Very possible they were inspired by that among others things. I think most of the times it's pretty much impossible to attribute one's inspiration to a single source, at least I know I can't
EPT
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