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Comment by crooked-v | Hacker News Reader

> Banksy’s iconic Girl With Balloon (2006) attracted feverish bidding in the room and on the phones, racing past its high estimate of £300,000 to hammer at £860,000, or just over £1 million ($1.3 million with fees). As the gavel slammed, a siren rang out through the salesroom and everyone stood stunned as the Banksy canvas slid through the frame that it was contained in and emerged underneath—but shredded.

I'm impressed by whatever engineering went into the power source for that shredder lasting since 2006 while still being remotely triggerable with perfect timing.

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The implication is that the frame was a recent addition and that Banksy or an accomplice was in the room to trigger the shredder at the right time

Having thought about it a bit, a shredder is a complicated and unreliable machine for a stunt like this. I reckon there was a roller hidden in the frame with (half) a pre-shredded painting on it. The roller then rolls in the main painting while dispensing the shredded version. Much simpler, and easier to test.

That's why it stuck half way, most likely. Shredders are unreliable but I wouldn't call them complicated. Small ones are expense and it only had to work once.

> The spray painted work of the girl with a red balloon, acquired directly from the artist, came in what the catalogue called “the artist’s frame”—a frame that was oddly thick for such a small work of street art.

I doubt the frame was from 2006. And even if, the batteries in it could be inserted/changed prior the auction.

There are lithium batteries which can last up to 40 years, for example Tadiran.

How long can they power a radio though?

Maybe some kind of ultra-low-power accelerometer assembly to only power up the radio for X hours after movement?

It only need to power it every few minutes for it to works, hell if you consider any interesting auction would be announced at least one month before, you can power it every month with something stronger like 3G to get a more precise day to be active.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Electric_Bell runs since 1840. This likely needs more power, though, making it harder.

I would think the buyer of this piece might be happy with what happened, though. The shreds still are there, and likely are worth more than the original piece of paper.

There appears to be a light inside. Compare the unshredded top to the bottom in one of the pictures from the front.

https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/uk-england-bristol-45770028

It probably used that power source.

The light appears to not come from the inside:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Std3LfVx41c&t=33

You're right. Still photos can be deceiving...

It looks like the battery ran out, it didn't completely shred.

Or maybe that was intentional so it's still "in one piece" and you can still hang it at the wall? That at least was my first thought.

Yeah definitely, some thought went into this for sure ;-) If destruction was the intention, it would have happened.

You'd almost think this story is too good to be true. But we all know this is real.

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