Ars Electronica Festival: Day -01
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| Today was the installation day. I guess it's been installation day for several weeks here, particularly for the larger projects that involve truckloads of sand, cranes and other such things. My project fits in a small crate and basically just needs to be mounted and plugged in to the wall. Err. Wait, the plug won't fit.. |
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| Fortunately, the incredibly accomodating, prescient and experienced production crew here has been phenomenal in all regards, and particularly in the case of such things as power transformation. Although this project has been installed in places where power from the wall is at 220 volts, I neglected to bring a power transformer. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that most modern power adapters for computers and monitors and such have a wide range of voltages they will accept in order to power a device, but the electrical engineer in me knew that running at a higher voltage, although possible, will result in much more heat generated, which is an issue as the Pussy Weevil enclosure is metal, and small, and has a fairly powerful computer made by Stealth Computer (by small computer standards) that generates a lot of heat on its own. | 
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| So, Gerold, the excellent tech, carpenter, motivator who, along with Silvia Keller, was responsible for getting everything in this particular space set up, thought to provide a transformer. I was a little bit anxious to get the Pussy Weevil tested before physically installing the whole thing, so I flaked out the entire guts to run it through its paces. Once that worked, all that would be left would be to decide on how to mount it to the wall and then have Marc, the carpenter, take care of the rest. |
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| But..when I plugged in the transformer, nothing happened..except that the artist on the other side of the wall - John Gerrard - poked around the corner and said, "what happened?" Cause and effect led me to believe that I had done something and that something had done something to John's installation. I unplugged the transformer and checked the fuse, which was blown. | |
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Marc was dispatched to find replacements and some time later returned with some. I replaced the fuse, plugged the transformer in and nothing happened..except that John poked around the corner and said, "what happened?" Cause and effect led me to believe that I had done something and that something had done something to John's installation. I unplugged the transformer and checked the fuse, which, this time, was not blown. I puzzled..screwed my face..then John poked around the corner and said, "do you think that transformer could blow out my video cameras?". Now, I was fairly certain that a really nasty surge could blow out pretty much anything, but each time this happened, a circuit breaker was tripped which would've prevented a large power surge. But still..suppose I blew out his expensive fancy firewire video cameras?? John has been installing his mixed reality piece The Ladder all week.. |
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