Stereoscope

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

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

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

Not having rested in the recent years, Project Blinkenlights has 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 invites 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 HallAmong the more traditional features, everybody can play classic computer games on the facade simply by using a mobile phone. The two upper parts of each tower serve as dedicated playgrounds each offering separate telephone numbers for individual gameplay. These numbers will be published on-site beginning the week before Nuit Blanche so that people can get the information where they need it - at Nathan Philips Square in front of City Hall in Toronto.

A simple animation tool and open animation data formats enable you to to create simple movies for Stereoscope - addressing one of four parts of the whole facade. Focusing on simple, low-resolution imagery, Project Blinkenlights wants 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 provides a set of tools running on Macintosh computers to design complex animation design that serves as the background imagery and core appearance of the Stereoscope installation.

Watching live

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

Join us

Join us as we move forward to create the next step in interactive for building size light installations. Subscribe to our blog to keep you updated and contact us if you have any special requests regarding Stereoscope.