Richard Box, artist-in-residence at Bristol University’s physics
department, got the idea for the installation after a chance
conversation with a friend. ‘He was telling me he used to play with
a fluorescent tube under the pylons by his house,’ says Box. ‘He
said it lit up like a light sabre.’
Box decided to see if he could fill a field with tubes lit by
powerlines. After a few weeks hunting for a site, he found a field,
slipped the local farmer £200 and planted 3,600 square metres with
tubes collected from hospitals.
A fluorescent tube
glows when an electrical voltage is set up across it. The electric
field set up inside the tube excites atoms of mercury gas, making
them emit ultraviolet light. This invisible light strikes the
phosphor coating on the glass tube, making it glow. Because
powerlines are typically 400,000 volts, and Earth is at an
electrical potential voltage of zero volts, pylons create electric
fields between the cables they carry and the ground.
Box denies that he aimed to draw attention to the potential dangers
of powerlines, ‘For me, it was just the amazement of taking
something that’s invisible and making it visible,’ he says. ‘When it
worked, I thought: ‘This is amazing.’’
" I wanted to describe
what happened within the field," Mr Box said. "There is always a
power loss along any overhead power line, and the fluorescent tubes-
all 1,301 of them- make the power loss visible. The result has
surpassed all my expectations."
Professor Henshaw praised the artwork. "It is very hard to explain
to the public what these fields are- that's the beauty of Richard's
work," he said.
" To have an artist make something about quite specific physics in
an artistic way is inspiring to us"
The amount of light emitted by the tubes varies according to the
weather, and the presence of someone walking among them can plunge
those tubes near them into temporary darkness.
The Bristol physicists will visit Field for a private view next
week.
