[Tech House Logo] La Bastille: A Tech House Art Installation

La Bastille is a very-large-scale integrated art installation created by Technology House at Brown University. The product of over five months of planning, construction, and installation, La Bastille is the largest art installation ever to appear in Rhode Island, partially visible from Narragansett Bay and from Interstate 95.

When it was running, it was also the world's largest fully-functional Tetris game.

Containing eleven custom-built circuit boards, a twelve-story data network, a personal computer running Linux, a radio-frequency video game controller, and over 10,000 Christmas lights, La Bastille transforms Brown's fourteen-story Sciences Library into a giant video display which allows bystanders to play a game of Tetris which can be seen for several miles.

La Bastille opened at 8 pm on Friday, April 14, 2000 and ran through Saturday, April 22. During that week, people and media organizations from near and far came to watch and play. On May 27, hundreds of Brown alumni and students on campus for commencement weekend watched and played Tetris on its last night. La Bastille was put into storage the next day.

When we were in operation, anyone could come and play in person. We were at Brown University and we played from just south of the Sciences Library. Directions and a map are still available.

[Nik Lochmatow Sketch of the Sciences Library]
Sketch by Nik Lochmatow

Watch it Live!    Construction Photos     Gameplay Photos     Movies

History of La Bastille    Java Simulation

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