Installation / 2008
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Operation method
Motion detection sensors track the presence of visitors in the space, after this detection the fans inside the balloon glass container start to spin, making the balloons float inside it, a smaller directional fan, by the opening of the container, is blowing in order to push one balloon out, after a few seconds after the container door opens through a pulley system controlled by a servo motor. An infrared proximity sensor, located right outside the door, tracks when the balloon exits the aquarium and triggers the pulley system to close it's door as well as triggers the fans outside the aquarium to spin at their full power.
Due to the wind generated by all the industrial fans on the floor the balloon is forced to float beside the wall and enter the camera field of vision.
As soon as this happens, the computer, receiving the image from the camera analizes the incoming data and calculates the distance, angle and speed of the balloon, then based on the gun current position calculates the best spot for intersecting the ballon, after this calculation the computer sends the intersection position to the motors that control the gun aiming position and shoots. if it fails it will shoot again until the balloon is blown away or this manage to leave the camera's field of vision.
For every shot there's a message sent to a second electronic board that control the paintball's feeding mechanism, so that even if the gun shots ten times in a few seconds, the parallel board get the message of each shot and keeps them in memory so that afterwards it will send the same amount of paintballs to the gun's paintballs reservoir, even if it takes a lot longer than the shooting rate.


Commissioned by
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (PT)

Curated by
Filipa Oliveira

Software made with OpenFrameworks