Science center NEMO in Amsterdam asked us do make a new piece for their upcoming summer exhibition “De kracht van 10” (The Power of 10).
For this installation we developed with a help of an old school friend and engineer Janez Jazbar a new kind of sensor. This sensor operates a switch which can be connected to any third device. We wired 50 TL tubes to the new sensors/switches and made a 2x2x5 meter composition. The result is an installation that not only reacts to the mobile phone but also to the field it produces it self. The reason is that electronic starter of a TL tube produces a small electrical field and 50 tubes on such a proximity produce together quite a strong field. The effect of “firing” the thing up with your cell phone was very beautiful. As it turned out, keeping the system stable was a real challenge and we spent quite some days up in the air tweaking the sensitivity of the sensors.
