Following the destruction of the Interconnector Model 1, work immediately began on an improved model, the Interconnector 2. This version featured 108 short films which could be randomly paired up with 30 statements about interconnectivity, resulting in over a quarter million possible permutations.
Restarting from scratch allowed the Zazen engineers to rethink a number of issues that had plagued the first model. Within a year they had perfected a new design that was more reliable, cheaper, with a higher quality display and a button that allowed the user to swap channels to invert the meaning of the message. Plans were put in place for a nationwide marketing campaign.
Given that the Interconnector Model 2 was one of Zazen’s most popular products, it wasn’t too hard to track down a used version at a local thrift store. Bringing it back to life was a much more difficult problem.
Due to the limits of the technology of the day, the Interconnector didn’t keep all its video files stored internally. Instead, sequences were received as broadcasts from local UHF antennas, utilizing a very small part of the broadcast spectrum rented from local affiliates. These short broadcasts were then stored temporarily in a digital frame buffer within the device, and replaced when the user selected a new sequence. Everything was erased as soon as the unit was powered down.
Luckily, I was able to track down VHS recording of the original broadcasts. I digitized them, then used a Raspberry Pi computer, the OpenCV imaging library, and some custom Python code to recreate the experience as faithfully as I could.
