Battle against ESD
Feb 25, 03:55 PM by Tilman

The Electrical Fantasista Exhibition design is quite extravagant: the whole floor is covered with white foam plastic and visitors have to take off their shoes to enter.



The problem however is that by walking around people get electrostatically charged up and whenever they touch any conducting material this energy is discharged with a nasty spark. Unfortunately the stainless steel PainExecutionUnits of PainStation are attracting these electrostatic discharges (ESD) like shit does flies and our homebrew electronics couldnt take as much of these shocks as they are dishing out: yesterday a transistor was blown and PainStation started to run amok.


So instead of going to Tokyo to shop for more electronic components, we had to find a way to discharge people before touching our precious invention. In the end we got rid of the foam around PS and replaced it with a metal mesh that we connected to the water pipe in the bathroom. It works great now, but its amazing that just when you thought you are prepared for any possible failure of your artpiece a new challenge comes up. An advice to all people thinking about doing media art: stick to video art. All you have to do is burn a DVD!

Tomorrow is the offical opening party! Make sure to reload for some pain deformed japanese faces!

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