News
Stereoscope Documentation Video
Aug 19, 2009
We somehow failed to officially publish the documentation video for our recent Stereoscope project. Mea culpa. But here it is:
The video is also available for direct download in iPod/iPhone and HD 720p versions at our Project Videos section.
Blinkenlights goes Twitter
Apr 6, 2009
We are now also present in the Twitterverse: twitter.com/blinkenlights.
Blinkenlights @ Küchenradio
Nov 12, 2008
I had the opportunity to tell our story at this week's edition of Küchenradio, a german podcast.
Stereoscope wins Nuit Blanche People's Choice Award
Oct 24, 2008
Project Blinkenlights has won the People's Choice Award of the Nuit Blanche 2008 in Toronto. As the name implies, the price was awarded by the people who voted for their favorite project on the sponsor's project page instead of a jury.
The Blinkenlights is very happy about this award as it proves we have been able to reach out to the public and let them enjoy our installation in a very unique way. A big thank you to everybody who voted for us.
Blinkenlights Tech Talk in Toronto this tuesday
Oct 14, 2008
While we are busy dismantling Stereoscope we'll still find the time for another small event: we are going to do an informal presentation of the technology developed for and used by our light installation this tuesday at 8pm at the hacklab.to.
We are going to explain how everything worked and kind of technology we had to invent to make this al happen. We would be happen if you join. The hacklab.to is located in Kensington Market at 170a Baldwin Street (above Graffiti pub).
Blinkenlights Symphony: the music
Oct 13, 2008
You can now download the music of the Blinkenlights Symphony by the german artists Kraftfuttermischwerk that they composed especially for Project Blinkenlights. The music is available under a Creative Commons license and can be copied and used freely (excluding commercial use).
UPDATE: the link pointed to the wrong file initially. This has been fixed now. Please try again. Sorry for the confusion.
Thank you, Toronto
Oct 13, 2008
Blinkenlights Stereoscope is over now. Thank you Toronto for giving us the opportunity to present our work here. It has been a great experience and we think Toronto is a town that is more than worth the effort. We have had a good time here and the response of the people has been great.
We are now busy dismantling the installation which will done end of the week. We'll head home then and we appreciate the good time we had.
Stereoscope Photo Gallery on flickr
Oct 12, 2008
In addition to a of photos and videos of Stereoscope you can find on the web right now (preferrably using the recommended tags), we have also set up a collection of our own photography for you to browse.
If you have photos of Blinkenlights up on flickr as well, you join the Blinkenlights flickr group and post your photos there.
The final night
Oct 11, 2008
Tonight is going to be the last night of Stereoscope in Toronto. So enjoy our animations and games for the last time before we start dismantling the installation on Sunday.
We hope you all enjoyed our piece in the recent week and we would love to hear from: drop a comment here or write us an e-mail about how you experienced Stereoscope. Any kind of feedback is welcome.
Stereoscope Simulator for iPhone updated
Oct 9, 2008
When you check for application updates on your iPhone you might notice that there is a small update for the Stereoscope Simulator for the iPhone available now. Not much has changed though. The application can now display announcements on startup and matches the the functionality of the Mac application.
Stereoscope Games phone numbers for your phone
Oct 9, 2008
We have put the telephone numbers for the Stereoscope Games in a vCard 3.0 file for easy importing into your phone. Might come in handy.
Download: Stereoscope Games phone numbers as a vcard file (52 KB)
You should be able to either load this file into your contact application on your computer and sync it to your phone or directly load it on your phone depending on how your system works.
Camera is working again
Oct 8, 2008
Our streaming camera is working again and hopefully will continue to do so until Sunday when Stereoscope is being shut down.
A look back at Nuit Blanche 2008
Oct 8, 2008
Videobloggers at Dear Toronto provide a look back on what was going on at the streets of Toronto last saturday at Nuit Blanche 2008. Of course Stereoscope is one of the project mentioned.
While Nuit Blanche 2008 is history, Stereoscope keeps on running until the end of this week.
Camera temporarily down
Oct 8, 2008
Due to an issue with our uplink the live camera is down and might not go up until tomorrow. Stereoscope is still running and will continue to do so until next Saturday.
Nuit Blanche Toronto 2008
Oct 6, 2008
So Nuit Blanche is over and it was an amazing evening. Nathan Philips Square was populated by thousands of people watching the beginning of Stereoscope which also served as the official opening of the Nuit Blanche itself. Here are some first impressions:
Later on, Falk Gärtner presented the Blinkenlights Symphony - a real time video mixing experiment in synchronization with music composed for this event by the fearless musicians of Kraftfuttermischwerk of Berlin, Germany. The symphony was well received by the audience and Stereoscope worked flawlessly the entire night. We couldn't be happier with the results.
More animations for Stereoscope are trickling in and we add more and more stuff to the playlist while also experimenting with a couple of real time generators backstage. We still have a week to go and all contributions are welcome.
Mac Simulator updated
Oct 4, 2008
If you have installed the simulator before it should auto-update. Just launch the program and wait for the update dialog. You can also force the update check using the application menu if it doesn't come up automatically for any reason.
Countdown
Oct 4, 2008
So today is the big day. We are going to switch our proxies to the live signal so that you can use the Stereoscope Simulator to watch it going it real time. There will also be an update to the Macintosh simulator soon showing the same 3D model as the iPhone version does.
Next we will release the telephone numbers you can use to play the list of games we offer. It is going to be a long list as we have developed quite a few in the recent days.
While you are waiting for Stereoscope to start, you can watch a timelapse movie that we made during our testing phase yesterday:
Stereoscope Live Video Stream
Oct 4, 2008
Please note: since the project is over now, the stream is also gone.
We had set up a video stream for Blinkenlights Stereoscope.
We tried to provide higher quality but streaming technology these days still seems to be in its infancy. It's all too complicated and not powerful enough to be setup easily.
We are using the ustream.tv service right now which apparently does not have too much bandwidth for Europe but it should be fine for North America at least. Leave a comment on how it works for you.
Participating in our Blinkenstream Distribution Network
Oct 4, 2008
From tomorrow on, the Stereoscope Simulator receives a real time data stream that is an exact copy of what we are actually showing on the building. This stream will start on October 4th, 2008 at 1900h EST.
In order to be able to deal with the demand, we have set up a network of cascading blinkenproxies that relay the data to each other in a hierarchical manner. But we do not have enough server capacity to handle larger loads and we don't know how many people will actually tune in. It could be some, it could be many. So we are asking people running a server somewhere to help us out and participate in our Blinkenstream Distribution Network.
We have readied a simple blinkenproxy program (written in Ruby) that should be easy to deploy. All you need to do is to download the script, make sure it runs (and keeps running) on your server and tell us where it runs so that we can add your server's address to our list of public servers the simulator can connect to.
Download: blinkenproxy.rb on GitHub
Thanks in advance for your help.
Tagging Stereoscope
Oct 4, 2008
We know that quite a few people put up photos and videos on sites likes flickr and YouTube and the like which is fine. We would like you to tag all the material with both the tag "blinkenlights" and "stereoscope" if you do so that we (and everybody else) can easily track new material automatically. Thanks!
Writing Games for Stereoscope
Oct 4, 2008
We have now finalized the new Gaming API for Stereoscope, which means that if you have a good idea for a game that could be played on the facade of Toronto City Hall using a mobile phone, there is a real chance to get this done. We know this is short notice, but it's worth a try.
So Jonathan has published the preliminary documentation and the code for the Blinkengame API you need on his website. We will roll this in our website later on, but let's be quick:
Read: Blinkengame API for Java
Stereoscope as a VJ screen
Oct 3, 2008
Last night VJ Falk Gärtner - who is going to present the Blinkenlights Symphony at Nathan Philips Square live at 10pm - was doing his first test run linked to live to the system via WLAN. And the results were stunning. It's quite an advantage to be able to control contrast and brightness while sitting in front of the building watching it in real time.
Have a look for yourself:
Got it? It's going to be amazing.
Movie Submission interface up and running
Oct 3, 2008
We have finally opened up our submission interface for movies for Stereoscope. Please follow the guidelines to be able to upload your content. Thanks in advance for your contribution. It is highly appreciated.
Updated Creation Tools
Oct 3, 2008
We updated the Stereoscope Creation Tools a bit to include a variety of smaller bug fixes that might come in handy.
Bre Pettis on Stereoscope
Oct 3, 2008
Bre Pettis has published the second part of his story about Project Blinkenlights, this focusing on Stereoscope.
Tips for creating content for Stereoscope
Oct 2, 2008
Designing content for Stereoscope has its challenges. As our matrix consists of two towers facing each other, has a pretty low resolution and small range of brightness there are some things to consider when creating content for it.
Here are some tips from us:
- High contrast is always a good idea - as high as possible that is. If you think the contrast looks too high on your computer screen its probably not even enough. Greyscale photos are barely visible as is. 1bit animations are the best visible obviously. Videos work less good then shape animations. Big shape animations work better then small shapes. Do not put in too much detail.
- Work with the two towers individually - if you have bright animations consider putting them only on one tower - or alternate between the towers. Its actually nice to play with the reflection that way. If you have a white screen on the west tower the east tower will be extremely washed out.
- If the animations are too fast swish-swoshing across the screens then you are only seeing the afterglow of the lamps - it can be a nice effect but remember that this will hinder the visibility of what is actually shown. Keep it slow. Think about the sheer size of the building: people need time to track movements.
- The outer parts of the towers are also not visible from many positions - that's especially important if you want readable text. Take a look at our 3D simulator to test the looks of your stuff from various viewing positions and angles.
Calibrating Stereoscope
Oct 2, 2008
One of the better features of our latest installation Stereoscope is that we are able to fine tune the calibration of the system. Dominik wrote a small application for the iPhone that serves as a remote control for selecting exact dimmer timings for every single greyscale value (Stereoscope uses 16 different brightnesses to produce its magic).
The results so far are pretty nice:
Welcome to Project Blinkenlights
Oct 1, 2008
Welcome to Project Blinkenlights. This is our brand new home page. It's the place to get in-depth background information on our upcoming activities and recent projects alike.
Latest project: Stereoscope
Our latest project – running from October 4th to 12th 2008 in Toronto – was Stereoscope. Check our extensive information on how you still can participate and enjoy the installation in real time all over the world.
Stereoscope is the next step in interactive art in architecture and will take place in the context of the Nuit Blanche Toronto. We are all very excited about this third iteration of the Blinkenlights saga and invited everybody to team up and create a wonderful platform for everybody once again.
Former projects
Project Blinkenlighs came to life in 2001 with the original Blinkenlights installation at Haus des Lehrers, Alexanderplatz in Berlin, Germany. The name of this light installation gave the title to the project itself and serves as a brand for all our future activities. In 2002 Project Blinkenlights moved to Paris to put up the Arcade light installation at Bibliothèque nationale de France.
Both projects are well documented and you can find video documentation on both in our video page.
Stay up to date
From now on we are going to report on our activities in our Blog. Subscribe to our Feed in order to keep in touch with everything happening in our little blinking universe.
You might also want to follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/blinkenlights
Image to BML converter
Oct 1, 2008
Dan Fraser posted an image converter that creates BML files that can be used for Stereoscope. This means you can convert any animation to our format by using one image per frame as an intermediary format essentially interfacing to every possible animation generator.
Ready to run
Oct 1, 2008
Tonight we finished the basic setup for Stereoscope: all the floors are working, we finished the calibration and squeezed a couple of remaining bugs in the way we coordinate the dimmers. We are very happy with the results. We are now going after a couple of remaining minor issues to make sure everything looks great.
This means we can focus on the content now. There is still a lot going behind the scenes and we hope we can still push out a couple of extra tools. We are also readying the submission system so that you can send your content to us.
We are also making progress with the streaming setup. We are confident to be able to provide live streaming of the event. Thanks to everybody who offered us streaming server capacity. We will get back to you soon.
Streaming server needed
Sep 30, 2008
There is a real chance we can provide you with a working video feed of Stereoscope as we have a camera in place but unfortunately we lack server capacity to re-broadcast it to the world.
So if you can help out we'd like to hear from you. We are explicitly looking for a Darwin Streaming Server installation that has enough bandwidth to sustain quite a few viewers (no, we have no clue how many it would be but we think it would be a lot).
The story of Project Blinkenlights
Sep 30, 2008
Bre just recently launched a fantastic new TV show called History Hacker (I can only recommend watching the show's pilot episode to get an idea). We recorded a podcast on his work at the 24C3 in Berlin. Bre describes his view of the hacker culture and his motivation to do what he does. Check it out.
Bre has now written a long article about Project Blinkenlights which comes in two parts of which the first has been now posted to his blog: Blinkenlights: The Beginning. I am really looking forward to part two and will tell you when it's available.
Setup Crew 4 
Setup Crew 3 
Setup Crew 2 
Setup CrewFirst Light
Sep 29, 2008
Blinkenlights Stereoscope is powered by a new wireless dimmer technology that has been been developed by the team in the recent months explicitly for this installation in Toronto, Canada. We will post more on about our technology soon which will also be made available under a free license.
Blinkenlights Library for Processing
Sep 29, 2008
The Blinkenlights Library for Processing includes all the code you need and detailed instructions how to set up your development environment to create Stereoscope-compatible graphics. Processing is available for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows alike and is our first true cross-platform development environment.
This is not the end. We have more to come and will provide you with even more exiting options to participate in Stereoscope. Next up is a development environment for telephone controlled games. Watch this space and spread the word.
Stereoscope Creation Tools released
Sep 28, 2008
We are also planning to release an enhanced framework for animations and games (!) for the cross-platform Processing and Java programming languages soon. Stay tuned!
Stereoscope Simulator for iPhone now available
Sep 28, 2008
You can now finally download the Stereoscope Simulator for iPhone from the iTunes App Store. Hooray!. Please note that you will still receive a test stream for now. We let you know when the real stream goes live (while the application itself will notice automatically). Download the application here.
Ready to debug
Sep 28, 2008
Currently this means a lot of running around and testing and mostly work at night. It's a pretty exhausting job and the amount of work seems to be endless. If you live in Toronto you can already take a peek while run our tests on the facade. But keep in mind it doesn't look very nice until we have squashed all the remaining bugs.
The Virtual Matrix
Sep 27, 2008
We have now updated the website to better explain on how to address the Stereoscope screen space. Thinking about the problem with a facade effectively torn into four separate areas we came up with the idea of a Virtual Matrix that includes all four screens and aligns them within a much larger matrix. Read more about this on our page on how to create content for Stereoscope.
Expect more updates on this topic soon. We are preparing releases of more tools that you can use to target Stereoscope and we hope you will join us in this endeavor.
It Blinks
Sep 26, 2008
We had the first two nights where an aware observer could spot some blinking pixels on the east tower.
Stereoscope Paint
Sep 25, 2008
Stereoscope Paint is limited to the two top screens of the building (because the lower parts are partly obscured by the building itself). And you can only target one of two screens at a time. Once you have finished an animation you can save it as a file and submit it. We will post the submission form later on as it is not yet finished.
Stereoscope Simulator for Mac OS X v0.95 released
Sep 24, 2008
Right now the Main Toronto Feed is of course not yet running while we are still preparing the installation. But it will be available later on and it will become the default stream when you launch the application then.
We know this is currently a strong Mac-focus regarding our tools but this is not the end of the story. We will soon provide more cross-platform stuff to keep you all busy contributing to Stereoscope. Stay tuned.
The Blinkenlights Symphony
Sep 19, 2008
Dubbed the Blinkenlights Symphony, we are going to present an audiovisual experience using the Stereoscope facade as a huge realtime video display in sync with music especially composed for the event. The presentation starts at 22:00h (10PM) Toronto local time and will last about half an hour.
The visuals will be produced live by VJ Falk Gärtner using the VDMX video mixing software suite which has been enhanced to speak the Blinkenlights protocol directly. You can read more about the technical background in Falk's blog.
Website redesign and ongoing coverage
Sep 12, 2008
While there is still work to do in terms of providing all the content you'd like to see here, we have made a big step forward completing the intended design for this website. It should be now much easier to navigate and find information about specific projects, especially about Stereoscope.
Next phase will be to fill in the blanks and do the final roundup as we get ready to leave Germany for Canada beginning of next week. From then on, we will provide detailed information about our daily progress on Stereoscope with behind-the-scenes updates, pictures and other news regarding the project.
Documentation Videos available
Sep 6, 2008
In the process of getting this new site ready for primetime (I know there are still a lot of dangling links and tons of missing information) I have added a new page consolidating all our documentation videos. In order to make this updating process more transparent, I am going to blog about any significant progress.
Introducing Stereoscope
Sep 2, 2008
We have been quite pretty silent on our upcoming activities while we were busy drafting a plan and starting production for our third and up til now largest interactive light installation about to take place this October in Toronto, Canada: Stereoscope.
Stereoscope is our next step in interactive media art facilitating buildings to reclaim public space for the masses in an urban context. Targeting the Toronto City Hall in downtown Toronto we are about to build a Blinkenlights-style installation that dwarfs the former project in scale and complexity.
Adressing 960 windows in total and using newly developed innovative wireless light control technology, Project Blinkenlights is about to transform Toronto's city center around Nathan Philips Square into a luminescent maelstrom inviting people to play and interact in new ways.
Bear with us while we are preparing the extensive pre-event documentation covering all aspects of our activity. As usual, we did not have much time in developing the project and its technology. So a lot if details are still in the works and we will disclose certain aspects of Stereoscope once we know how exactly they will come to life and will be presented to you.
Welcome to Project Blinkenlights
Sep 1, 2008
Welcome to Project Blinkenlights. This is our brand new home page. It's the place to get in-depth background information on our upcoming activities and recent projects alike.
Latest project: Stereoscope
Our latest project – running from October 4th to 12th 2008 in Toronto – was Stereoscope. Check our extensive information on how you still can participate and enjoy the installation in real time all over the world.
Stereoscope is the next step in interactive art in architecture and will take place in the context of the Nuit Blanche Toronto. We are all very excited about this third iteration of the Blinkenlights saga and invited everybody to team up and create a wonderful platform for everybody once again.
Former projects
Project Blinkenlighs came to life in 2001 with the original Blinkenlights installation at Haus des Lehrers, Alexanderplatz in Berlin, Germany. The name of this light installation gave the title to the project itself and serves as a brand for all our future activities. In 2002 Project Blinkenlights moved to Paris to put up the Arcade light installation at Bibliothèque nationale de France.
Both projects are well documented and you can find video documentation on both in our video page.
Stay up to date
From now on we are going to report on our activities in our Blog. Subscribe to our Feed in order to keep in touch with everything happening in our little blinking universe.
You might also want to follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/blinkenlights
Welcome to Project Blinkenlights
Sep 1, 2008
Welcome to Project Blinkenlights. This is our brand new home page. It's the place to get in-depth background information on our upcoming activities and recent projects alike.
Latest project: Stereoscope
Our latest project – running from October 4th to 12th 2008 in Toronto – was Stereoscope. Check our extensive information on how you still can participate and enjoy the installation in real time all over the world.
Stereoscope is the next step in interactive art in architecture and will take place in the context of the Nuit Blanche Toronto. We are all very excited about this third iteration of the Blinkenlights saga and invited everybody to team up and create a wonderful platform for everybody once again.
Former projects
Project Blinkenlighs came to life in 2001 with the original Blinkenlights installation at Haus des Lehrers, Alexanderplatz in Berlin, Germany. The name of this light installation gave the title to the project itself and serves as a brand for all our future activities. In 2002 Project Blinkenlights moved to Paris to put up the Arcade light installation at Bibliothèque nationale de France.
Both projects are well documented and you can find video documentation on both in our video page.
Stay up to date
From now on we are going to report on our activities in our Blog. Subscribe to our Feed in order to keep in touch with everything happening in our little blinking universe.
You might also want to follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/blinkenlights
Welcome to Project Blinkenlights
Sep 1, 2008
Welcome to Project Blinkenlights. This is our brand new home page. It's the place to get in-depth background information on our upcoming activities and recent projects alike.
Latest project: Stereoscope
Our latest project – running from October 4th to 12th 2008 in Toronto – was Stereoscope. Check our extensive information on how you still can participate and enjoy the installation in real time all over the world.
Stereoscope is the next step in interactive art in architecture and will take place in the context of the Nuit Blanche Toronto. We are all very excited about this third iteration of the Blinkenlights saga and invited everybody to team up and create a wonderful platform for everybody once again.
Former projects
Project Blinkenlighs came to life in 2001 with the original Blinkenlights installation at Haus des Lehrers, Alexanderplatz in Berlin, Germany. The name of this light installation gave the title to the project itself and serves as a brand for all our future activities. In 2002 Project Blinkenlights moved to Paris to put up the Arcade light installation at Bibliothèque nationale de France.
Both projects are well documented and you can find video documentation on both in our video page.
Stay up to date
From now on we are going to report on our activities in our Blog. Subscribe to our Feed in order to keep in touch with everything happening in our little blinking universe.
You might also want to follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/blinkenlights
Welcome to Project Blinkenlights
Aug 14, 2008
So here we are. This is the new home of Project Blinkenlights. It doesn't have everything that you used to find on the original pages, but we will be getting there.
Main focus is to create a space that is able to deal with the amount and complexity of information we intend to post about both recent and upcoming projects. Just rest assured the project is still alive and kicking and is about to announce some tasty stuff soon.
Projects
Since 2001, we have realized a variety of projects, most notably our breakthrough original installations Blinkenlights and Arcade.
Update 2004-01-02
Jan 2, 2004
Blinkenlights Reloaded has taken all hurdles and is running without problems for a week now. We have received over 200 movies so far (half of it were loveletters). Keep it coming! We have to switch off Blinkenlights Reloaded on January 4th, 2004 but we'll continue to provide the functionality on the small-scale version of Blinkenlights in the construction sign in front of Haus des Lehrers. And - who knows - maybe we come back sooner than expected.
Who wants to have fun now can watch the QuickTime live video stream. The stream is available at rtsp://dss.berlin.ccc.de/blinkenlights.sdp (if your click doesn't work, open the address directly with the QuickTime Player).
Update 2003-12-23
Dec 23, 2003
Blinkenlights Reloaded is still fighting with some unexpected technical problems. That's why there are no loveletters yet. If you are interested on up-front updates on our progress, consult Tim's weblog The Lunatic Fringe.
Update 2003-12-22
Dec 22, 2003
Blinkenlights Reloaded has been enabled today and the Pong game has been activated. Unfortunately we have to deal with some details so that we can't respond to your movie and loveletter requests right now. Please stay calm. We'll contact you.
Update 2003-12-07
Dec 7, 2003
The Matrix returns!
From December 22th, 2003 to January 4th, 2004 there will be a revival of our Berlin installation: Blinkenlights Reloaded. The building Haus des Lehrers - currently under reconstruction - will be operated as we did it before. A new version of BlinkenPaint lets you create movies and you can play the interactive game Pong and activate your personal loveletters with your mobile phone.
Read all about it on the Blinkenlights Reloaded page.
Update 2003-12-04
Dec 4, 2003
Okay, things are moving forward right now. But before we reveal the white rabbit we'd like to point you to some news that aren't really that new but interesting nevertheless.
A year ago, we have built a miniature version of Blinkenlights for the construction site of Haus des Lehrers (the building currently receives a general overhaul). The miniature version has been integrated into the construction sign standing in front of the building and has all the features of the original (you can even play Pong on it with your mobile phone). In addition it has the capability of displaying greyscales which was easy as the lighting was done using LEDs.
The greyscales look quite cool and in order to be able to make nice movies for it, our authoring application BlinkenPaint has received a major overhaul as well and has been updated with features of ArcadePaint. BlinkenPaint Version 3 can read and write both BLM and the new BML format. The program has additional enhancements like a dynamic slider enabling you to scroll thorugh the movie quickly. To make things complete, there is now a native version for Mac OS X as well.
A small movie shows the construction sign in action. It is available in MPEG-4 (1,8 MB) and AVI (3,5 MB) format.
Update 2003-12-03
Dec 3, 2003
Not much news has been available on Project Blinkenlights recently and due to some problems with some of our servers the web site was not available for a couple of days. This has been fixed. Expect much more news on our project soon. Surprise, surprise!
Update 2003-07-18
Jul 18, 2003
Die members of Project Blinkenlights will of course be at the upcoming Chaos Communication Camp 2003 from Aug 7th to 10th, 2003. Center of activity will be the Art & Beauty Village at the Camp. Some developers will be found mainly at the GimpTent. Apart from the crew some of the Blinkenlights clone projects (see Links) will gather at the BlinkenArea in the same village in the main tent.
Update 2003-06-10
Jun 10, 2003
Another Blinkenlights lecture is scheduled on Friday, June 20th, 2003 in Turin (Italy) at Hackmeeting 2003. It will start at 22.00.
Update 2003-05-19
May 19, 2003
On Thursday, May 22nd, 2003 a lecture about Blinkenlights will take place in Zürich (Switzerland) at Helmhaus in the context of a symposium named "Narrationen in der Medienkunst" for tutors and students at swiss arts universities.
Two more presentations follow up in Helsinki (Finnland) as part of the Software Art Festival README 2.3 on Friday, May 30th and Saturday, May 31st, 2003 about Blinkenlights and the Chaos Computer Club.
Update 2003-04-09
Apr 9, 2003
blinkenlights.de has been nominated for the 7th Webby Awards in the NetArt category. If you think we should win in this category you can cast your vote for us.
Update 2003-03-06
Mar 6, 2003
After a long pause we are happy to announce the availability of our documentation video for our Arcade project last year in Paris. The video lasts around 14 minutes and is available in a MPEG-1 and two MPEG-4 versions.
Update 2002-12-06
Dec 6, 2002
19C3: Blinkenlights will be present at the 19th Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin in the "Laboratory" with a small project area. Other projects, dedicated to the miniature reconstruction of Blinkenlights and future software development, will join. Our links page a updated overview over these projects. There will also be a lecture on Arcade and the current state of the Blinkenlights project at the Congress.
Update 2002-10-28
Oct 28, 2002
As part of the OpenChaos event series the Chaos Computer Club Cologne presents a talk of the BlinkenMINI project on Thursday, October 31st 2002.
Update 2002-09-25
Sep 25, 2002
ARCADE starts today! There are various news on the project web site. The installation will be streamed live and there are many new games (Tetris, Pong, Breakout, Pacman). Furthermore there is an overview over the new programming tools that allow to create your own games for the installation.
We celebrate the last day (5.10.2002) with a big party just in front of the house. We will couple the DJs and VJs with the installation and will set up a huge audio VU meter on the house.
Update 2002-09-21
Sep 21, 2002
BlinkenMINI is a new project, that rebuilds Blinkenlights with LEDs. The project also provides some updated file formats and command line tools to play with.
Update 2002-08-24
Aug 24, 2002
We would be happy if you would join our little project and contribute new pictures and animations. The ArcadePaint program is a new version of the original BlinkenPaint program and has been enhanced significantly. As before, it runs on Windows and Mac OS systems.
Update 2002-08-22
Aug 22, 2002
Update 2002-07-01
Jul 1, 2002
Update 2002-06-17
Jun 17, 2002
NEW DATE! On July 18th, 2002 at 4 PM there will be another talk on Blinkenlights in the context of a lecture series called "Vorträge zur Gegenwart der Stadt von Morgen" at Berlin Technical University. On July 30th, 2002 at 9 PM we are also part of the 6th Garage 2002 Culture Festival in Stralsund with another presentation. Both web sites tend to reflect the dates quite inaccurately.
Update 2002-05-03
May 3, 2002
There will be a presentation of the Blinkenlights project on May 17th, 2002 in Amsterdam at Paradiso as part of the 6th International Browserday.
Update 2002-04-29
Apr 29, 2002
Update 2002-04-26
Apr 26, 2002
The Blinkenlights Simulator and the Blinkenlights iPaq Player have been updated to accommodate a change in DirectFB. You find the new versions on the Blinkentools page.
Update 2002-04-17
Apr 17, 2002
On Thursday April 18th, 2002 we show our new documentation video at 2200h in the lounge of the c-base at Rungestrasse 20 in Berlin. The video will be available for download here soon.
Update 2002-04-15
Apr 15, 2002
Additionally you can find the iPaq Blinkenlights Player, that plays back Blinkenlights Movies on the Compaq iPaq under Linux. Last but not least, blgimp has been updated to version 2.1.
Update 2002-04-12
Apr 12, 2002
Wilber, the mascot of the image manipulation program The GIMP, has moved to the House Of The Teacher in the most recent incarnation of the program's splash screen for the current development version.
Update 2002-04-08
Apr 8, 2002
Update 2002-04-07
Apr 7, 2002
For the friends of parallel worlds we'd like to point you to the "node" about blinkenlights in the excellent system Everything2. A nice place to browse and associate. You can also find interesting things about Pong in it.
Update 2002-03-28
Mar 28, 2002
Blinkenlights Roundup. The Bye Bye Blinkenlights page contains a small party review and links of the artists if there are any. In our press room you find a copy of the recent article in the april edition of Wired Magazine. Our Blinkentools now contain a link to the flashlights home page, where you can find the most recent version and the source code for the project.
Update 2002-03-23
Mar 23, 2002
The last minutes of Blinkenlights are finally digitized and downloadable as Video:
Please step back, relaxen und watchen das sparkenlichten.
Update 2002-03-10
Mar 10, 2002
Photographer J.D. Perkins has accompanied the last day of Blinkenlights and has published a selection of his photographs on the web at http://www.ripserve.com/perkins/blinkenlights/.
Update 2002-02-24
Feb 24, 2002
After exactly 23 weeks and 5 days Blinkenlights was finally switched off in the morning of February 24th, 2002. We say thank you to everybody who has contributed to the the success of the project and to the many visitors of our Bye Bye Blinkenlights Party. For us it was a great and exciting period and we are happy to have generated so much response.
We are already have some ideas for the future, but right now we are having a decent break first. If you are interested getting information on our future activities, please send a mail to blinkenlights-update-subscribe@lists.ccc.de.
The Blinkencrew
Update 2002-02-12
Feb 12, 2002
Update 2002-02-09
Feb 9, 2002
The Blinkenlights Art&Beauty Contest has now ended. One of two iPaq Computers is being awarded to the winners: Robert Gehrmann for the Blinkenlights Movie The Fly receives the Jury Award, Thilo "Cyrion" Graf is the winner of the transmediale Audience Award for Le Chat Noir.
Update 2002-02-07
Feb 7, 2002
You can participate in determining the winner of the transmediale audience award for the best Blinkenlights Movie! Use our Blinkenlights Voting to give your opinion on the movies in our gallery [NO LONGER AVAILABLE].
Update 2002-02-05
Feb 5, 2002
Update 2002-02-04
Feb 4, 2002
On Thursday, February 7th, 2002 at 4pm there will be lecture on Blinkenlights as part of the "Public Space Invaders" panel. On Saturday, February 9th 2002 there will be a screening of the best 100 Blinkenlights Movies. There is a fee of €6 (€5 ermäßigt) for each of these events.
Update 2002-02-02
Feb 2, 2002
Our Gallery has been enriched significantly. About 60 new movies have been added. More will be added until the pre-selection for the finish of the Blinkenlights Art&Beauty Contest is completed.
Update 2002-01-31
Jan 31, 2002
The Blinkentools have been updated to version 1.1. The new option --hdl-huge produces even bigger preview movies (also with our web interface) and the blm2gif program is able to convert (repainted) preview movies to Blinkenlights movies.
Update 2002-01-27
Jan 27, 2002
In our Blinkentools section you can now find a simple Java Package named SomeJavaForBlinkenlights for creating Blinkenlights Movies.
Update 2002-01-22
Jan 22, 2002
The latest addition to our Blinkentools collection is called blinkenscroller.
Update 2002-01-21
Jan 21, 2002
Some of of the TV reports about Blinkenlights have been converted to MPEG-1 format in addition to already present QuickTime versions.
Update 2002-01-14
Jan 14, 2002
We have a short clip of the countdown to new year (the last 1000 seconds have been counted) in AVI/3IVX Format on our server.
Update 2002-01-08
Jan 8, 2002
The Blinkenlights Art&Beauty Contest has been extended. It will be finished at transmediale.02, the international Media Art Festival in Berlin. There will be a lecture on Blinkenlights and in addition to our contest, there will be a participants voting on the best Blinkenlights Movie.