Fireflys - not the SciFi - but

[tickler]

I can think of so many things to do with these.

MIT's Flyfire - LED Copters Into Floating 3-D Displays
Meet the next generation of art installations. Together, the SENSEable City and ARES Labs at MIT have created an adaptable, remote-controlled display comprised of dozens of robotic, flying "smart pixels."

The concept is simple: As with any digital image, the picture is made of groups of tiny dots of varying colors that, at the right scale, appear as one large image. Now imagine the pixels in a pointillist painting like a Georges Seurat aren't tiny flecks of paint, but thousands of miniature helicopters with varying color LEDs arranged as the image.
http://www.popsci.com/technology/art...s-3-d-displays