Banksy’s self-shredding painting – How I would do it

By Brian Dipert

As some of you may already be aware, a painting done by Banksy, a well-known (not to mention still anonymous despite being in the public eye for several decades now) British street artist, activist and director, partially shredded itself immediately after receiving a winning bid for more than $1.3M U.S. dollars (1 million Pound sterling) at Sotheby's auction on Friday night, October 5. 

Here's the shredding mechanism.

Here's a photo of the Balloon Girl (aka Girl with Balloon) outcome, from Banksy’s own Instagram account.

So how did Banksy pull off this widespread attention-getting stunt, squeezing all the necessary electrical and mechanical components inside the frame…and how can you replicate (if not one-up) it on your own? Details on Banksy's setup are sparse at best, but in combination with my own engineering chops, I'm going to take a stab at answering these questions. And of course, please sound off with your own thoughts in the comments!

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