I finally had some time to play around with the Flickr API and created Flickeur. This piece retrieves random images from Flickr.com and creates a stream-of-consciousness type of video clip out of them. By adding image layer upon image layer it creates an endless loop which is in constant change. Sometimes this principle generates the strangest stories. Due to the random nature of the piece you may have to be patient a bit until something starts to happen.

I have used Kelvin Luck’s Flashr wrapper which makes all the communcation with the Flickr API very easy. Unfortunately there is a real problem with the way the security sandbox in Flash handles the draw() command: whilst you can load and display images from other servers you cannot draw() them to a bitmapData object. In order for that to work the loaded clip has to issue a System.security.allowDomain(myDomain) which of course only swfs can do - not JPEGS. This means you cannot do any fancy bitmap operations with these images. The only workaround I have found until now is to use a proxy on my own server which fetches the images from flickr. Of course that is not satisfying at all as now all the traffic is adding to my server bill.