
As a fan turns on it blows air upwards pulling the balls in the tubes towards it. At the end of each tube is a sensor that acts a a switch. This switch turns off the current fan and light and turns on the fan attached to the last ball to hit it. Once one fan is turned on, this process continues because of the way the fan/hubs are interconnected.
Technical Info: Each time a ball hits one of the switches, information is sent through the wires in the poles to a micro-processor (bx24.) This processor contains a program that controls the the lights and the fans for each hub. It also sends information serially to a laptop. The laptop is running the SixFans program written in the Max environment. Here the music is generated by taking information from the installation and using it to generate midi sounds. A set of speakers provide sound.
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