(«Light ON/OFF»). Over a dedicated telephone number, passers-by or the spectators who came to the square were able to play Pong on this rudimentary «media facade» or, via a specially engineered web interface, program short animated sequences that were then shown on the building. The project was concluded with an international competition in 2002.

While contemporary architects are meanwhile likewise experimenting with media facades (see for instance the VEAG building in Berlin or Renzo Piano's building for the Dutch telecommunications company in Rotterdam), «Blinkenlights» is not concerned with the aspect of dynamic architecture as media-supported ornamentation, but precisely with the maximum possible visibility of a participatory impetus in an urban space. It is concerned, in other words, with an emphatic notion of what is public.

Translation by Tom Morrison