Pneumatic ping-pong ball delivery system playfully fires balls into "art environment"

r0r0 sez, "Ping Pong Ball Suction Construction is a pneumatic delivery system for ping pong balls as part of an art environment that's actually on display in Lille, France."

In Spring/Summer 2012 both guys were invited to create an installation version of Ping Pong Country in Lille’s Gare St. Sauveur. They were a bit tired of doing the same thing for such a long time over and over again, so they asked me to contribute some machinery to the environment in order to make it a bit different in its actual version. I came up with the devilish plan to offer the audience an opportunity for sabotaging the game in a playful way. “Ping Pong Country / Edition Sabotage” was born.
While some people play ping pong (preferably more than two players which then have to run around the table) another visitor can confuse the players via a separate control panel which is part of the sabotage edition: This destructive master mixer lets you switch the music to Heavy Metal (accompanied by disturbing strobe light); you can turn on fans on the ceiling for an additional wind challenge; you can just add some funny train and animal sounds with a supercool children’s toy, or – and now it comes – you can spill plenty of balls onto the ping pong table which you collected beforehand with the “Ping Pong Ball Suction Construction”!

Ping Pong Ball Suction Construction (Thanks, r0r0!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Remmelt Pit

Ping pong country <3 <3 <3 <3
awjt

I was hoping to see someone shoot an extra ball onto the table right in the middle of play, like me & my friends do to each other. Except fast, and remotely. Just FIRE, and players have to compensate. Or fire it HARD at a player, you know, just CUZ.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Manfred-Müller/100000138624367 Manfred Müller
  
  all that happened of course – when the camera was not running.
Donald Petersen

I do so love that song. When I’d be playing L.A. Noire, driving around looking for perps, and that song would come on the radio, I’d just keep on driving around L.A. tappin’ my toes, whistling, and occasionally neglecting to dodge pedestrians until the song ended.
jwkrk

This reminds me of when I was in school. In my high school the library had a large circular balcony around the perimeter. One day, towards the end of the school year, a bunch of students (over a hundred of us), had bought packages of ping pong balls.

Over the course of fifteen minutes or so we gradually congregated in the library and made our various ways to the balcony.

At a predetermined signal, nearly a thousand ping pong balls were launched to the library below. Hilarity ensued.