Stereoscope

Blinkenlights Stereoscope (2008), City Hall, Toronto, Canada

October 4th – October 12th, 2008 (from dusk till dawn)

View the photo set on flickr.

After a long break, Project Blinkenlights came back big time in Toronto, Canada in 2008. Targeting the landmark building of Toronto City Hall, the group participated in the Nuit Blanche all-night art event on October 4th, 2008. The installation's name "Stereoscope" reflected the special nature of the building with its two curved, opposing facades effectively creating a three-dimensional appearance.

Not having rested in the years before, Project Blinkenlights had developed new technology to wirelessly control the lights placed behind the 960 windows of City Hall, allowing for a large scale visual concert during the night in downtown Toronto.

Public Participation

As usual, Project Blinkenlights invited the public to be a part of the installation by opening up a variety of ways to interact with and provide content for Stereoscope.

Toronto City Hall Among the more traditional features, everybody could play classic computer games on the facade simply by using a mobile phone. The two upper parts of each tower served as dedicated playgrounds each offering separate telephone numbers for individual gameplay. These numbers were published on-site beginning the week before Nuit Blanche so that people could get the information where they needed it - at Nathan Philips Square in front of City Hall in Toronto.

A simple animation tool and open animation data formats enabled people to create simple movies for Stereoscope - addressing one of four parts of the whole facade. Focusing on simple, low-resolution imagery, Project Blinkenlights wanted to revive the spirit of the original Blinkenlights installation in Berlin that obtained its charme from the down-to-earth, barebones design of low-res imagery.

For advanced graphic artists, the group provided a set of tools running on Macintosh computers to design complex animations that served as the background imagery and core appearance of the Stereoscope installation.

Watching live

We also provided simulator software for the Mac, the iPhone/iPod touch and other platforms that received and displayed live broadcasts of our animations being shown on Stereoscope in real time. This way you could watch Stereoscope from everywhere on the planet. Nice 3D graphics and simple interaction made the iPhone application especially useful. The iPhone application was available from the iTunes App Store.

Documentation Videos

We have created a extensive documentation video for the project. You can view it right here or download a high-resolution copy from our video page.

In addition, Discovery Channel Canada has produced a lenghty behind-the-scenes documentation of the project for its program that is also very insightful:

Stereoscope Gallery