Slobberchops (possibly aka Moop Man) and I added the final touches to the Magic Mirror literally minutes before Biggus Dickus helped us box it in ridiculously heavy plywood and pack it on the truck for shipping to the playa. We weren’t sure it would work outside the lab. Would it break in shipping? Would a show-stopping bug emerge? It was all worth it, because it totally worked.

A couple of qualifications about the video: the shadow effects (constantly shifting shadows behind the diffuser added depth to the image) are only barely visible, but they were amazing when you stood in front of it. The camera couldn’t handle the colors well (it tends to blow out when the exposure shifts quickly), but in person, the colors were very smooth & creamy, with the dithering doing its job remarkably well.

Every night many people played with it. This was my first piece of big art on the playa, and I am still pretty amazed at how happy people were and how much love they gave us for it. Yay!

Note to self: 12v/100Ah batteries are Very, VERY Heavy to schlep, but solar is a wonderful way to get DC power. It Just Worked. We got ~400W/hour, and the batteries were charged every day by 10 or 11am. It definitely made me think about how much more blinky goodness we could wlre up.

I’ll write up the build details at some point; there are a lot of photos, and quite a few more videos with equally bad color. But meantime, let’s all dance with the lights.