Not saying this is the right direction for the project, just more thinking out loud. You most likely will end up with something very different than this in the end Smiley.
this is how it always works. the thinking aloud part is the most fruitful, because even tho 99.94% of the ideas are dead ends, the fraction that are good are great.
i am not going to be too attached to whether the videos can be embedded in the quilt (so called, and for all intents and purposes rightly so). they may end up being shown on a tv in the corner. but that's too old fashioned, and i'm trying to avoid it.
part of the intent of this project is to teach repurposing to a receptive and resourceful group of people, as an idea that has commercial applications. so i'm trying to make something neat with nothing in ways anybody can learn.
back to the idea of a million mp4 players. some of them have external speakers. i could slip them into special pouches in the fabric, and loop the same playlist on all of them, staggered, and wait for the batteries to run out.
or, i could make a million youtube channels. no, that would take internet access at the site, which i'm not assured of, and i'm not willing to do the installation at an internet cafe...
a million mp4 players sounds more like it (i mean 18 or fewer). can you use arduino to power them so you can plug it into an outlet?