Power lines kind of ‘leak’ energy that isn’t being fully utilized, which maybe why you hear buzzing when standing under the lines. Some groovy artist has used this energy to power a thousand fluorescent lights.
Richard Box, artist-in-residence at Bristol University’s physics department, got the idea for Field (2004) – 1,301 fluorescent tubes powered only by the electric fields generated by low overhead powerlines – after a conversation with a friend. ‘He was telling me he used to play with a fluorescent tube under the pylons by his house,’ says the artist. ‘He said it lit up like a light sabre.’
