Electromagnetic Emission Art 198
mr_lithic writes "The artist Richard Box has used the electromagnetic field generated by overhead transmission cables to power 1300 fluorescent lightbulbs positioned underneath. Some pictures available.
Professor Denis Harshaw at Bristol University explains "There's an interactive element to all this, too, for those who go to the site itself. 'You affect the lights by your proximity', explains Richard Box, 'because you're a much better conductor than a glass tube. And there's sound as well as light - a crackling that corresponds to the flashing of the lights. There's a certain smell too, and your hair stands slightly on end.'"
Sounds cool and it is on until February 29th. Directons here."
electromagnetic waves kill also brain cells (Score:1, Interesting)
Wrong physics (Score:5, Interesting)
Not really. Lighting the bulbs most certainly reduces the power on the lines. The inductance of the power lines change because of the presence of the bulbs.
Science and Art (Score:5, Interesting)
It's cool to see art and science actively collaborating. From the article:
free power (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, check out some of his other art [zen.co.uk]. "A rotating, pulsating, elevating, sound and movement activated, life-size neon brain." Now that's just strange.
Here in the Philippines (Score:5, Interesting)
Easier to jumper someone elses jumper leads anyway.
Stealing energy (Score:5, Interesting)
Technically, he scoops out energy from overhead lines. True, it's insignificant, but still he could be charged with theft. Of course, since it's art, I doubt anybody at the power company will say anything, but I wouldn't be surprised if they told him to take his art somewhere else.
A well know, similar "application", was demonstrated when wireless transmission technologies boomed in the 30s in Paris : the first antennas had been installed on top of the Eiffel tower and were putting out dozens of kilowatts. Some smart guy started selling battery-less flashlights under the tower, and a lot of gullible people bought them, amazed that they indeed created light magically without batteries. Little did they know the magic flashlights had a little coil inside that used the Eiffel tower antennas' HF power to light up the bulb, and therefore could only work under the tower. The flashlight seller was eventually caught and, far from being charged for scamming people, was charged for stealing TDF (French wireless authority) energy, which was apparently much worse.
But anyway, pretty cool art I say. The cows in the field nearby must have fun watching that every night.
At last, an event near me! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Here in the Philippines (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:free power (Score:5, Interesting)
ref: Operation Ivy Bells [randomhouse.com]
Power Lines have links to other Negative Effects (Score:5, Interesting)
This is often linked to the power return to the station. Everywhere, electrical service has everything connected in relation to ground, with any difference in the power balance of the phases of power taking a different path back to the source of the power, i.e. the ground itself, and potentially through anything in its path.
This "stray voltage" manifests itself when animals, with 4 bare hooves, paws, etc. touching the ground, detect small but irritating (to varying degrees) levels of current taking an alternate path back to the source. Animals have also been proven to have a higher sensitivity for detecting stray currents as well, compared to humans.
Often in cases, to the power companies defense, they will come out to do a check on the premises, and often do find a problem in the local, on-farm wiring, potentially causing the problem.
Unfortunately, in the cases of newer farms where all the wiring is new and up-to-code, a stray current is often traced to off-the-farm sources, for example, a newly-installed High-voltage Power Line.
Re:Science and Art (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the sculpture itself is really pretty, it reminds me of De Maria's Lightning Field [lightningfield.org], another large scale installation that uses the surrounding environment.
Re:Forest (Score:2, Interesting)
A new spin on the "Tree falling in the forest" enigma, isn't it?
No, more like a new spin on "fair use" (or something).
If you walk under the powerline and thus happens to draw current from it without paying, is it then theft?
Or illegal emissions? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you've got an EM field that is powerful enough to light up 1000 light bulbs, it seems intuitive that there is enough energy to cause harm to humans living at similar distances.
Re:free power (Score:3, Interesting)
Reminds me of school (Score:5, Interesting)
Our physics teacher was using the Van der Graaf for an experiment (in fact, he was intending to measure the current it produced). Over the demonstrator's bench, a fluorescent tube was flickering. He got annoyed. He climbed on a stool to remove the offending fluorescent.
You can guess the rest. The remote end of the tube dropped towards the van der Graaf. About 10cm from the dome, there was a spark. The dome discharged through the tube, which flashed, the physicist, and the stool. Most impressive.
The tube survived falling on the bench. We learned several things from this:
Re:Not theft. (Score:2, Interesting)
I once got quite a little jolt from touching a barbed wire fence that ran parallel to a high tension wire
It seems people have been sued for this (Score:5, Interesting)
I also remember one of my high school teachers talking about how he used to work for hydro and look for this sort of thing while flying in a helicopter and inspecting power lines.
Really it shouldn't be that hard to find this sort of thing. You can just use a time domain reflectometer, and power companies have these for finding cable faults.
Re:Wrong physics (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:free power (Score:2, Interesting)
As for how they actually listened in, it was not exactly picking up EMF from outside the cable. Rather, they simply tapped the copper wire by physically inserting some new wire into the cable right alongside the old wire and planting a recording device.
It's not very difficult to do, and you won't easily be detected when you do it (unlike tapping fiber cable, which can instantly be detected). What's more curious about this case is after some time, when they went back to the location, the recording devices were missing!
Re:It seems people have been sued for this (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, though, how about a little detail on what that does? I suppose I could Google it, but here's my guess:
The device measures the distance along the line to an increased area of inductive load by timing the reflection of a signal from that part of the line. The helicopter then flies out that far and looks for an antenna.
Here's another question: Why are British power companies referred to as 'hydro?' Is hydro-electric the default method of producing electricity there? Or is power transmitted around the country using high pressure hydraulic lines and then converted to electricity on site? :-)
These questions keep me awake at night (briefly).
Slightly off topic but... (Score:1, Interesting)
/l
Re:Wrong physics (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting EHT effects at a power station (Score:3, Interesting)
12 Mega Watt output cables. Asides from the crackling noise due to a light drizzle falling on the cables, there were other effects too.
Having stood under the cables for a couple of minutes, I felt no adverse effect... until I started to walk away. That's when I started to get a headache...
Re:Reminds me of school (Score:2, Interesting)
Capacitors also make good coupling between AC lines and other wires in their vicinity. I had a case when we got a grounding wire broken in a wiring cabinet, and all the computers connected to that circuit had slightly "live" cases - enough to light up a neon bulb slightly, enough to feel "live" on touch when you have high-enough skin resistance, enough to show on a high-impedance digital multimeter (some 60V AC), but not enough to show on a lower-impedance multimeter of a technician the building maintenance person called in after we complained. I had to borrow them my own multimeter.