This is what a Jedi Knight graveyard looks like.

Wasn't that trick in "The Prestige" where Tesla had a bunch of (what looked like) incandescent light bulbs stuck in the ground all lit up?

With the going rate on florescent bulbs, that's the most expensive garden in the world.

florescent tubes are also very handy for confirming whether or not one's microwave oven - or any other source of radiation for that matter - is "leaking".

just wave it in front of the microwave while it's on. if it lights up spontaneously, just go ahead and forget about having kids right there.

I like when I sometimes pick up a CFL bulb, and I light it up w/static.

@kOtic:
you're forgetting about mendocino county bro...

Just imagine what all that lost energy is going to your genes also.

Digg it, I did :)

@nutbastard: That's actually inaccurate... microwave radiation would at worst cook you, not make you sterile...

@HJTravels: That was my first thought - imagine living under those power lines like a lot of people do...

@HJTravels:

It's not "lost" energy. Normally, the field is stable, but when you put a bunch of CFL tubes across it (like putting coils) they glow with a bit of parasitic energy.

Nothing is free. Each one of those bulbs is taking a few watts from the hundreds of kilowatts flying on the high tension wire above. In fact, the power company will sense all those bulbs as a kind of "fault" in the supply line, and try to find it during a normal maintenance.

@med:
i stand corrected sir.

@med:
Cooking your boys will make you sterile. Sperm don't like heat ;)

Hrm, last I knew that was called theft instead of art. Farmers used to hook up coils in their fields beneath the power lines and "sell" the power back to the power companies.

@martinbogo:

Exactly. This is the myth that you can build a house under a high tension line and place a huge inductor loop in the attic to get "free" energy. The power company would find you and fine you.

@dichron: So don't stand in front of a microwave for long periods of time? I don't think the heat causes permanent damage.

@FrankenPC:
find you how? they dont even know how much juice you've used till they come out and read the friggin' meter.

It's not hard for them to see what's being delivered over a given line set, and when they see it drop, they'll try to source the problem during maintenance, as was said before.

"Hey Bob, was there a house here before? One with a massive inductor coil sticking out of the roof?"
"Uh, no, not that I know of."
"We should call someone..."

;)

My magnetic personality does the same thing to a dim bulb!

@metalfist:
LOL that was good...

@GiltProto: I don't get it ... but I'm strangely drawn to you.

@nutbastard: Trust me, they know man... The CIA tells them.

@fsusmithc2: Sort of, but with Tesla, the power was broadcast like a radio signal. No wires were needed.

I used to love smashing old floro bulbs in the dumpter out back of my old office.

However this display seems like it would be easily taken out by weather,roving animal or the like. Especially if left in winter conditions as it looks like it was. I wonder how long something like this would survive in tact out in the elements.

@med: So you are saying, if fortune favors you with a mild nutsack roasting, you would likely not be sterile?

Does this make Stephin Merritt like Uncle Fester on crack?

I remember a picture of this featured years ago in National Geographic.

Reminds me of the older art installation "The Lightning Field" by Walter De Maria.

[www.lightningfield.org]

I remember this from a Boing Boing posting about two years ago that talked about the copyright claim on the installation.

[www.boingboing.net]

@nutbastard: Where I live they don't have to come read the meter. They can read it through the same powerlines that deliver the juice. We also have the option of broadband over powerline (BPL) as well. Same technology.

i can has cancer?

This is old... I read this in a magazine about 8 years ago, and there was an investigation as to the amount of radiation from the powerlines, and the voltage that is radiated from it. Nothing new... but, the pictures are very interesting. The previous one was just a guy holding two tubes and standing under the cables.

@wjousts:
hmmm. We're still on a meter. We also have the option of 56k dialup @ 24600 baud as well. Same Technology.
: )

"It's all a large art project by Richard Box"

It's NOT art...it's a decoration project, a science project, a justification of my existence because I'm a talentless hack project, anything...except "art".

Waterfalls under bridge, orange drapes around a park, hundreds of naked people laying around, or florescent bulbs under a power line...NOT ART!!!

is this where Battles filmed their video?

+ Watch video

Nikolai Tesla FTW! What a Visonary.

@DWD:

Yes, you, you stupid animal, can be a art critic!

+ Watch video

@nutbastard: @med:

The compromise... song by the Dead Bushes... "Too Cooked to Fuck".

@nutbastard:
Wooo hooo. 24600 baud...........blazin. I remember back in the day surfing the BBSs with my dual 5 1/2" floppy drive Franklin @ 9000 - 14000 baud (depending on which "card" I had at the time).

Ah memories.......... Good times. Good times. Slow times, but good times non the less.

@furryfrog:

I have seen a picture of a man standing under power lines, holding two bulbs aloft, one in each hand, that glowed brightly. I think he was protesting against the power company.

@DWD:

had bit too much coffee today?

i told you, stephen merritt is a God.

Fluorescent. Otherwise, cool as usual.

Sorry, I know this was supposed to be art but some comments set me off.

Fluorescent light bulbs contain mercury. The standard fluorescent lamp contains approximately 20 milligrams of mercury. While there are no known health hazards from exposure to lamps that are intact, improper disposal of fluorescent lamps can contaminate the environment. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that over 800 million lamps are produced each year to replace 800 million lamps that are then disposed. Since 1 gram of mercury is enough to contaminate a 2-acre pond, there is enough mercury in those lamps to contaminate 20 million acres of water.

So PLEASE don't break Fluorescent lamps.

For all the GREENIES out there, let's have a little common sense, ban incandescent light bulbs and force the world to use Mercury filled Fluorescents!?! Now, I for one would rather have more Carbon Dioxide in the air than Mercury in my water. Let's wake up people, some corporation stands to make millions if the governments of the world ban incandescent bulbs.

The US EPA suggests not using Fluorescent bulbs around children, pregnant women or over carpeted areas for risk of Mercury contamination.

the question is, and here is the real question, could a i make a portable device that could charge my cell phone /other mobile device if i stand under high tension power lines? pat pand.

@Out2gtcha:
the difference is 14000 baud was FINE for BBs and anything you could hook up to back then.

Nobody compresses their web images anymore, so i have to sit for 10 minutes just to read the goddamn menu on a site that thinks it's fine to PS an image of a button that says "Home" at fucking HD resolution.

@ANoel:

Cute vid. But how dare you criticize my post...I mean my art-post. I crafted my comment out of my inner most being, I bared my sole, expressed my feelings and succeeded in evoking a response in the viewer. My post was art!

Stop kidding yourself. People with no talent who simply "do stuff" that any other person could do, are not artists. They are losers, parasites on society able to survive due solely to a pc culture of people too afraid to exclaim, "the emperor has no clothes!"

Don't just judge me, expand your horizons and judge the people who could make real contributions but instead proclaim themselves to be artists despite not having the ability to do anything that most everyone else couldn't do!

I put my proverbial brush down, the artwork of my reply is complete...I step back and admire...you may not criticise lest you be a dreaded "critic"!

@Nyle: Don't worry, I believe (hopefully) that once people start to realize the mercury content of these things, the asinine plans to phase out / ban incandescent bulbs (like the recent one in california) will bite the dust. I mean, look at the furor over the vaccine additive thimerosal, and that's just a mercury derivitive with no known causal link to any health problem. It seems utterly insane to me that people are more willing to perpetuate a known health hazard (mercury contamination) in favor of something that isn't even proven and, with recent evidence, more than likely provably false (C02 emissions causing global warming).

@atomriot: No, that was filmed at an abandoned slate quarry in the UK. And those aren't actually flourescent tubes but stacked LED's.