Arcade

Paris, September 25th - October 6th, 2002

Arcade is the brand new light installation of Project Blinkenlights. Following up on the original Blinkenlights installation in Berlin, Arcade marks a new step in interactive light installations in public space.

In the context of the Nuit Blanche art festival in Paris, the team transforms the Tower T2 of the Bibliothèque nationale de France into a huge computer screen. With a matrix of 20 x 26 windows (resulting in 520 directly addressable pixels) and a size of 3370m2, the Arcade installation is positioned to be world's biggest computer screen ever.

Eleven Nights

The installation starts on September 25th, 2002 running eleven nights until the official Nuit Blanche happening at October 5th/6th. During this time span, the installation will present an ever-changing kaleidoscope of animations and interactive applications.

Arcade promotes a new series of classic computer games to run on the building, allowing everybody to play games on the building with his mobile phone. Among others, the all-time favorite pixel puzzle game Tetris can be played using nothing but a mobile phone.

With its newly designed light control technology, the Blinkenlights team is able to smoothly dim the brightness of each pixel. This allows for sophisticated, large-scale animations glowing into the Paris night life.

Public Participation

Using the newly created ArcadePaint program - running on Mac OS and Windows operating systems - everybody can start creating his own pictures and animations immediately. The resulting files can be sent to us by e-mail to become part of the ever-growing playlist of animations to be displayed during the lifespan of Arcade.

Programmers might check out opportunities to create animations directly by creating the simple, XML-based file format, which is a natural evolution of the original Blinkenlights Movies file format.

Arcade Live

If you want to see Arcade live you should go to Paris and have a look for yourself. For those who do not have the opportunity to do this, we are publishing photos and videos of our installation. We try hard to document as much as possible.

The Live Streaming that was in place for the 11 days is no longer in operation. But we are working on providing the archives to you. This will take some time. Stay tuned.

Arcade Party 5.10.2002

The last night of our installation gets celebrated at Quai de Bercy - this means directly at the shore of the Seine opposite Arcade. Everybody is invited to participate. There will great dance music the whole night (Roussia/Paris, Lonesome Rocket/Berlin, Neal White/Berlin) und video animations by proto.beamaz.

During the party we will visualize the party's music with Arcade in realtime. We will also allow the VJ to mix live on the facade. The installation becomes a part of the party, the party becomes a part of the installation.

Videos

Here you find some low quality videos taken with our digital toys: http://ftp.acc.umu.se/mirror/media/Blinkenlights/

Photos

The following pictures are by Fr Harald & Erhard Fotografie.

Online publication is free if authors are mentioned correspondingly and notification mail with full URL is sent to contact@blinkenlights.de.

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Arcade Games

Arcade is an interactive light installation. Using your mobile phone, you can become a part of the event at any time.

Tetris

Tetris ist one of the most popular computer games of the last 20 years. Since its invention in 1985 it has found its way on almost any computer system and game console in one form or the other. With Arcade you can play Tetris with your mobile phone - on a playground 3370 m2 in size.

Whoever stands in front of Bibliothèque nationale de France can connect himself with the building by dialing +33 (1) 44 24 73 50. The current show will be interrupted and the text "TETRIS" announces that the game can begin.

Tetris requires to position the falling elements that they form complete rows. With the key 4 and 6 on your keypad the elements can be moved left and right respectively. With key 5 you can rotate the element counter-clockwise. If you have found the desired position, you can drop the element immediately by typing 8.

Closed rows disappear completely and the upper rows drop down so that more space is available for new elements. The game ends if you fail to close the rows and the elements stack and reach the top. Arcade then disconnects your phone allows the next person to go for another game of Tetris.

Pong

Pong is on of the first Arcade games that was already center of our Blinkenlights installation in Berlin. Pong gets activated by calling +33 (1) 44 24 73 51.

With the keys 5 and 8 you control your paddle up and down. Always try to push back the ball to the other side. Pong can be played by up to two players. The first caller plays against the computer. The second caller automatically takes over the computer's paddle so that both callers play against each other.

Breakout

Breakout is another hit of the simple pixel games. You have to clear the pixel mass in the upper area. Breakout gets activated by calling +33 (1) 44 24 73 52.

At the beginning of the game the ball must be fired off first. You shoot to the upper left using key 1 and to the upper right with 3. Using the keys 4 and 6 you can slide your paddle to the left and right (7 and 9 move it in single steps accordingly). You must push back the ball in to the upper area. You win a round when all bricks have been eliminated.

Breakout was programmed by 1stein using the Blinkenlights Library.

Pacman

Pacman is yet another Arcade classic everybody knows. Go for a pixel hunt and avoid the monsters. Pacman gets activated by calling +33 (1) 44 24 73 53.

Keys 2 and 8 direct Pacman upwards and downwards, the keys 4 and 6 move it to the left and right. By moving Pacman throught the openings and the border you can change to the respective opposite side of the playground.

Pacman was programmed by 1stein using the Blinkenlights Library.