Night falls and lights across the city come to life. Some turn on immediately, some blink – on, off, on, off, and on again. What first appears to be a flicker is, at a second glance, less random. Street lights, lamps, headlights, lanterns—silent witnesses to the goings on around them—now broadcast what they have seen, through Morse code.

The curious were invited to seek out these blinking automata on the streets of Sydney, slow down and tune in to stories silently received and translated by the iPhone/iPod Touch app, ‘Light Conversation’, available for free download in the iTunes Store.

Light Conversation was built with Cinder. Lights were hacked using Arduino. More information, including how to hack your own lights is available here.

Special thanks to:
Ernst Christen for help with circuit design,
Pip Smith for editing,
Lucy Parakhina for documentation,
Tobio for music in video,
and Matt Ward for use of Drunk on the Moon (and his bedroom windows).