Blinkenlights Interactive

Blinkenlights was a computer controlled system. This allowed for more features than just playing movies on the house: Blinkenlights was an extensively interactive system.

Pong

You could a mobile phone to play the arcade classic Pong right on the house. One started by dialing the number 0190-987654 (€ 1.24/min). A bit later one heard a voice explaning what to do. The house stopped its current program and switched over to the Pong playground: two paddles and a ball.

One used the 5 on your phone to move your paddle up, and number 8 to move it down. One were usually controlling the left paddle and playing against the computer on the right. If a second person called the system as well, it got into control of the other paddle so both could play against each other. Once everyone hung up, Blinkenlights switched back to its current playlist.

Here you can listen to our introduction. And this is the waiting loop that follows. The song is by the Berlin-based "Kitsch Pop Band" "The Beez". They are incredibly funny.

The simple Pong game inspired people and immediately grasped their attention. It was easy to "get it" and the game served as a catalyst spreading the word about Blinkenlights extensively.

Blinkenlights Loveletters

As a special service to the lovers among us we allowed to directly activate a prepared Blinkenlights Movie independently from the running program using the telephone.

So if you were in love, you could create a Blinkenlights love movie for your beloved one. People used the program Blinkenpaint or one of the Blinkentools to do this.

Once finished, the movie could be sent to us by emai. We put the movie into our system and sent an answer by email containing an access code and instructions. All that's left to do was to call Pong (see above) and when Pong came up (and you heard the introductory message) you entered the access code. Then your movie started playing.

The romantic impact of all this could be maximized by finding a nice spot on Alexanderplatz or even better by going up to Berlin's TV tower looking down at the town and Blinkenlights. The movie kept on running until one hung up and could be repeated at any time.

The Blinkenlights Loveletters were a bug success: more than 300 love letters were sent in during the lifetime of the project. Every night one or more love messages popped up on the huge screen and warmed a lonely heart.

Read more on the Blinkenlights Loveletters page.