Hey, we may all have been looking to the skies for a few minutes yesterday, perhaps praying as the Winter Olympics – and that hockey game – came to a thrilling end.

Yes, there’s been some great things to watch during the 2010 Olympic Games, and some great ways to watch them (as Gadjo has pointed out).

But, if you had not stared up into the darkened skies over Vancouver, you would have missed what could have been the best show of all.

User generated content illuminated the skies over Vancouver during the Winter Games, thanks to a Montreal-based interactive media artist – and the input of people just like you.

Based on ideas and designs created and submitted online by people around the world, some 20 high powered robotic searchlights were used to create a canopy of light over the city’s English Bay area.

 

That’s just part of its overall attraction to me – I love the idea that creativity, technology and just about anyone anywhere can be combined this way.

Called Vectorial Elevation, it’s the first time the interactive work of technically mediated art had been used or shown in Canada. The installation – considered one of the world’s largest interactive artworks – is by Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and it was part of CODE, the Cultural Olympiad’s Digital Edition and digital media project.

Every night, 10,000-watt lights moved in concert to project illuminated patterns in the sky that could be seen as far away as 15 or 20 kilometres from the city’s downtown core.

Visitors to www.vectorialvancouver.net designed how the lights moved, what angles they took, and how the lights would cluster in timed sequences to create their own patterns for the world to see. A personalized webpage was automatically created for each participant to document their design. Organizers estimated 130,000 different patterns would be created in the 24 days the project operated from dusk to dawn.

A real-time video stream of the work from four cameras placed around English Bay could be seen on the Internet.

A Flash applet let site visitors see the four project cameras in real time. The videos were subtitled with the name and location of the participant whose design was beeing projected.

Montreal-based Lozano-Hemmer said it was the largest sky canaopy he’s ever created in light – and he added that the project was driven by renewable energy.