Domino Day 2008

[Occulus]

I'd never heard of this before, ever. This is a yearly event in Leeuwarden, Netherlands, at which world records involving the toppling of dominoes are challenged and broken. Guinness officials are present to verify the records. The resulting efforts are works of art in and of themselves, 'active' art that may or may not actually work as it is supposed to work. There's a peculiar sort of tension here, a sense that once that first block falls, almost everything is out of the builders' hands.

Speaking of the builders, there are moments during the program in which two builders are selected for a Builder's Challenge. These two people have to complete critical portions of peripheral displays while the dominoes are falling toward their position; if they don't 'bridge the gap' before the falling section reaches what they're working on, up to hundreds of thousands of dominoes will remain upright and not be counted in the final tally. These challenges are heart-in-the-throat moments and, when successful, are cause for celebration.

The final Builder's Challenge has a goal of 402,014 dominoes. :wow:

LINK to a .PDF of the full domino field. This setup is absolutely ridiculous by any sane measure.

I've said enough. Let's begin.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

And so on.

Unfortunately, YouTube is in the process of taking away your ability to hear anything because portions of the audio in some of these videos ("Thriller" was in there before I went to work today, and that entire part is dead silent now) are apparently unlicensed under US copyright law. Even so, this entire event is just full of win. Do yourself a favor and watch all nine parts. Even though it's not in English, it's very easy to tell what's going on here... and it's just oddball awesome.

edit: Domino Day 2009 will take place on November 13, with 4,800,000 possible topples and a goal of a single domino higher than the final 2008 tally (which I won't spoil for you).