Blinkenlight

Haus de Lehrer at the Alexanderplatz Berlin

Last week I spent a couple of days in Berlin, where I past by the Haus des Lehrers at Alexanderplatz. It made me think of Blinkenlight – a nice project in 2001 that transformed this building into a low-resolution monochrome interactive computer screen.

The project was part of the 20th birthday celebration of CCC, Chaos Computer Club, the largest association of hackers in Europe.

Eight floors and 144 windows were used and behind each window a lamp was placed to create the giant display with a resolution of 18×8 pixels so that each window was functioning as a pixel. Each lamp was individually controlled by a computer.

The public were able to use the display in creating animations, making creative messages to their loved one or take a break and play the well known video game Pong via their mobile phone.

Blinkenlight project was evolved through CCC and has been developed further and also shown in many other countries.

I like Blinkenlights as it involves and invite the audience to interact in a public space in a nice way.

The Blinkenlight was included in the exhibition Public Electronic! at the Museum of Sketches in Lund in 2006. The exhibition was produced and curated by Electrohype, I was one of the curators.

More information and documentation of the project can be found at the Blinkenlight website.

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    POST: 6 May, 2013 · Artwork