October 2008

Camera temporarily down

Submitted by Tim Pritlove on 8. October 2008 - 1:53

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

Submitted by Tim Pritlove on 6. October 2008 - 5:10

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

Submitted by Tim Pritlove on 4. October 2008 - 23:56

We have updated the Stereoscope Simulator for Mac OS X to version 1.0. It now features the same awesome 3D model as the iPhone version. Now everybody on a Mac can enjoy this realistic view.

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.

Play games on Stereoscope

Submitted by Tim Pritlove on 4. October 2008 - 23:46

We have now released the list of games that can be played on the building alongside with the telephone numbers you have to call. Have fun.

Countdown

Submitted by Tim Pritlove on 4. October 2008 - 19:42

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

Submitted by Tim Pritlove on 4. October 2008 - 5:18

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

Submitted by Tim Pritlove on 4. October 2008 - 4:32

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

Thanks in advance for your help.

Tagging Stereoscope

Submitted by Tim Pritlove on 4. October 2008 - 4:06

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

Submitted by Tim Pritlove on 4. October 2008 - 3:48

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

Submitted by Tim Pritlove on 3. October 2008 - 23:23

There is one day left to go and we are making good progress in setting everything up. Although the system itself basically started to work last monday there are so many details you need to take care until you can call it perfect (or at least good enough).

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.

Support Blinkenlights using Flattr