EEVBlog #1131 - £1M Banksy Artwork Shredded! HOW?

[Fungus]

You're saying any art project (eg. this prank) that makes him more important as an artist is fraudulent?

No, yet my post may imply it. Sorry, it was not meant this way. Arrangements between bidder and owner to drive the price up might be fraudulent, but hard to regulate, i don´t know enough about it. The piece itself is not any different by doing so.

What if Banksy is both bidder and owner? Is it still fraud?

[thm_w]

Seems weird that Sotheby's would put it on display. Doesn't the buyer want it?

Now we're back to the theory that Sotheby's was in on it all along and the auctioneer does push a button just after the hammer falls.

(watch the video at 0:36)

Art owners often don't care about having pieces in front of them, its all about hoarding their money somewhere. They can sit in big warehouses near shipping ports to avoid paying tax: https://www.npr.org/2018/02/15/585971962/why-a-lot-of-very-expensive-art-is-disappearing-into-storage

If you can find some footage of another auction during that day where the auctioneer does not press a button, that would be strong evidence. But a quick search did not find other footage from auctions that day.

[Howardlong]

Seems weird that Sotheby's would put it on display.

Marketing, it can only add to the item's notoriety and value.

What if Banksy is both bidder and owner? Is it still fraud?

Apparently, the buyer is a woman. she could, of course, be an agent for the buyer.

[DrGeoff]

Looks like additional wires heading up to the top of the frame and possibly down the sides.
Antenna?
Or maybe a concealed receiver power-up mechanism that could have been activated during a pre-auction inspection of the lots (eg a couple of magnets located in the right places at the back)?
Then the primary cells and mechanism could have been there a bit longer than Dave suggests based on the lifetime of a receiver continuously powered.

[free_electron]

-fixed-. pasted wrong link.
the directors cut.

shows a different cuttng mechanism ( rotary blades )

but . note how he holds his soldering iron .... 

[orin]

Then the primary cells and mechanism could have been there a bit longer than Dave suggests based on the lifetime of a receiver continuously powered.

The receiver doesn't need to be continuously powered.

I'd have a system where it has two states - deep sleep and armed.  In deep sleep, it powers up for a few milliseconds every few minutes.  If it gets a signal, it goes into the armed state where it listens more frequently, or even all the time for the trigger signal.  If it doesn't get triggered for half an hour or so, it could go back into the deep sleep mode.  There would have been more than enough time to send such an arming signal in this case.

Let's say your receiver uses 20 mA and you listen for 10ms each second.  On average, you are now only using 200 uA.

Alternatively, depending on the RF chip, it might be better to send out an "I'm listening now" signal and then power up the receiver just long enough to get a response.  Some of these low power RF chips use less current to transmit than receive!  If you don't know when your message is coming in, you have to power your receiver up long enough to receive two messages to ensure a message will be within your receive window - assuming a continuous stream if messages.  So if you use less current to transmit and your messages are the same length, the poll method can actually use less power.  It's certainly generating less useless RF on the part of the transmitter.

These sort of techniques are how a lot of low power wireless devices manage to run on coin cells.  You spend most of your time in some deep sleep mode and run the radio at very low duty cycle.

[Fungus]

the directors cut.

Wrong video?

Maybe this one:

[Fungus]

The roller mechanism, the downwads step, etc., are consistent with a real shred:





Also: The effort needed to fake that mechanism is on a par with building a real one. Why fake it?

(Yeah, the soldering iron scene is probably faked - like the scalpel blades were)

[NivagSwerdna]

You have to admire the nice machining.  And especially the drive belt. Engineering Art.

[glarsson]

That must have added quite a bit of weight. Didn't someone at Sotheby's wonder why the painting was as heavy as a bronze statue?

[Howardlong]

ROFL!

[glarsson]

ROFL!

Someone had been reading eevblog and decided to have some fun.

[Fungus]

ROFL!

Someone had been reading eevblog and decided to have some fun.

I'm sure that's done on purpose.

If you want a laugh, try googling shutterstock soldering.

[free_electron]

ROFL!

there's the xacto blades again ...

[Bud]

Am-Tech paid big buck for this promotion. did they exist 12 years ago?

[Howardlong]

The shot of it “working in rehearsals” was taken on a pretty modern smartphone.

Does anyone still think the complete shredding mechanism and its power source has been there since 2006?

[station240]

Am I the only one that noticed the chewed up belt in the early part of the video ?

Follow up video Dave ?

there's the xacto blades again ...

I think the xacto blades are a booby-trap for whoever tries to open the back of the frame with it in an upright position.
Notice the entire metal bar holding them down is in no way fixed to anything.

[thm_w]

The roller mechanism, the downwads step, etc., are consistent with a real shred:

Also: The effort needed to fake that mechanism is on a par with building a real one. Why fake it?

(Yeah, the soldering iron scene is probably faked - like the scalpel blades were)

yes looks like I was wrong and it actually cuts. This thing is incredibly complex given the end result.

[Howardlong]

I am still not at all convinced the shredder’s in the frame at all.

I don’t know why I didn’t notice it before, but there is what looks like a small window in the back, that was also there when I saw it in person at the weekend: I was fixated on the bottom of the frame.

[Fungus]

yes looks like I was wrong and it actually cuts. This thing is incredibly complex given the end result.

To me it all looks custom made/machined.

[Bud]

  https://youtu.be/vxkwRNIZgdY

[Bud]

The video does not prove much though, there may be copycats fabricating all sorts of things for fun. Certainly the person either had no knowledge how to use soldering iron or it is all part of the prank.

Edit: did we have 1280x720 digital video 12 years ago?  The quality of the video fragments is very consistent through the video, though supposedly there was 12 years time difference between shooting them.

[W9GFO]

The roller mechanism, the downwads step, etc., are consistent with a real shred:

...Also: The effort needed to fake that mechanism is on a par with building a real one. Why fake it?

Yes, that is exactly the type of mechanism I would expect to see that would actually shred the canvas. I believe it most likely that the real artwork was shredded, still some room for doubt on that though and I am not at all convinced that the "it didn't go as planned" story is real.

Taking into account the way the soldering iron was held and the existence of those exacto blades I would suggest that whoever was tasked with creating the "build video" added the row of exact blades for visual effect. At any rate, the person or persons that built the mechanism are not the same as who filmed it.

[W9GFO]

To me it all looks custom made/machined.

Agreed, but not about the "incredibly complex" part. It is far simpler than an ordinary inkjet printer but uses a lot of the same parts.

[W9GFO]

I am still not at all convinced the shredder’s in the frame at all.

I am. There must be rollers inside the frame to roll out the canvas. The real shredding mechanism is a series of pizza-cutter style blades adjacent to one of the other rollers. There is no additional challenge in placing that into the frame vs just rollers without the cutters.