Wow! What will they think of next?
During tonight's march from Foley Square to the Brooklyn Bridge, someone from the Occupy Wall Street movement (possibly a group called "The 99% Project") borrowed an idea from the Indignados in Spain and they projected OWS slogans on the side of the tall Verizon Building at the foot of the bridge.
Messages of excitement began to come across Twitter around the eight o'clock hour. Some people were sending pictures via twitpic and yfrog et al, then the CBSNews helicopter began to focus their camera on the building and I was able to get some screen captures from ustream.
From the OccupyWallSt.org site:
7:09 pm: A Light Show on Brooklyn Bridge is projecting "Occupy Earth - we are winning" on the side of the Verizon Building. Followed by "Happy Birthday OccupywallstNYC" Reported by @occupywallst
Here is some footage from the CBS News helicopter:
The 99% Project Gigantic Bat Signals onto the Verizon Building to Occupy the Earth - Nov 17th NYC
CBS helicopter view of the projections at approx 8pm ET 17th November 2011
A few more videos of the scene:
Occupy wall street protest 11/17/2011
Video on the Verizon building for the protesters crossing the Brooklyn bridge.
Occupy Wall Street 11/17 Verizon building
Projected onto the Verizon building, visible from the Brooklyn Bridge
Projections on Verizon building #ows
The 99% Project #Occupy Message on Verizon Building
Here are some pictures from various tweets and from screen captures I got from the CBS News ustream:
At this point, the cameraman in the helicopter started scanning around looking for the source of the projection, looking on the roofs of buildings and at different windows. I'm not sure why he was doing that and as far as I know he did not find the projector.
This is a creative and determined movement. You just never know what will happen next.
Where have we seen this before? Here is one example from Madrid:
Anonymous Symbol Over Puerto Del Sol, Madrid
Update 1:
Thanks to
marigold in the comments, we now know how this was done and who worked on the project.
This is a more accurate list of the messages, but does not include the location specific messages:
"99% / MIC CHECK! / LOOK AROUND / YOU ARE A PART / OF A GLOBAL UPRISING / WE ARE A CRY / FROM THE HEART / OF THE WORLD / WE ARE UNSTOPPABLE / ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE / HAPPY BIRTHDAY / #OCCUPY MOVEMENT / OCCUPY WALL STREET / list of cities, states and countries / OCCUPY EARTH / WE ARE WINNING / IT IS THE BEGINNING OF THE BEGINNING / DO NOT BE AFRAID / LOVE."
They used a 12K Lumen projector and they were in building across the street. They found someone who would allow them to use an apartment for an hour in order to this. They claim that the police knew where the projections were coming from, pointed to them, but did not disturb them.
Interview with creator of Occupy Wall Street "bat-signal" projections during Brooklyn Bridge #N17 march
A few hours later I spoke with Mark Read, the person behind the "bat-signal." He tells Boing Boing why and how he did this, and what technology he used.
[ ... ]
And a guy named Hero, who has been central to a lot of facets of the occupation since the beginning, turns to me and says, "We need a bat signal. The 99%."
I said, I think I can do that. I know just enough about how the technology works that I think I can pull that off. And for the past two weeks, I've worked full time on figuring that out.
[ ... ]
MR: Max Nova and JR Skola, from the art group Dawn of Man. They are video projectionists, and artists.
[ ... ]
They used Modul8 VJ mixing software, a Sony 12K lumen projector that sells for around $10K.
Update 2:
Many thanks for some additional pictures taken by
edsbrooklyn and sent to me via email. I particularly like that last one: