ADAD
This installation is a mechanism that serves as a kind of interface between planetary processes and an audience. It consists of 12 transparent piezocrystals, grown especially for the project, and 12 motorized hammers that strike them. The installation is connected to the internet. Its core algorithm is controlled by data from a meteorological site which shows lightning strikes in real time (on average, 10~200 lightning flashes occur on the planet every minute). Each time the installation receives information about a lightning strike, a hammer strikes one of the crystals, resulting in a small electrical discharge produced by the crystal under mechanical stress. Each of these charges activates a powerful lamp and sound effects.

Lightning Ride
“With Lightning Ride, it is now poles of technology, organics and mysticism that collide with  electricity as a connecting point. The video is produced from excerpts of “Taser Certifications”, a sort of ceremony authorizing in the United States the use of Tasers in the condition of being tased by someone else. Filtered with the Photoshop’s “oil painting effect”, slowed down and accompanied by a disturbing soundtrack, the succeeding images show us bodies and faces whose deformations and positions evoke a feeling of pain as well as a Christian ecstacy. Everything unfolds as if the miracle of electricity, symbol of the rationalization of the world, revived paradoxically an aspiration to transcendence, antipodes joining each other and disappearing in profit of a new map of possibilities.” (Sarah Ihler-Meyer)

The Lightning Field

His last large-scale work “The Lightning Field”, a Land Art project built on a semi-desert plain in New Mexico, in the United States, between 1971 and 1977, consists of four hundred meters high, placed in a geometric matrix strict. This area is often plagued by storms and these metal stakes serve to attract the rays, accentuating the dramatic spirit and the scale of the place.

FIELD

Die Installation ‘Field’ wurde erstellt, indem in Tormarton, South Gloucestershire, 1.301 wiedergewonnene 58-Watt-Leuchtstoffröhren mit einem Abstand von 100 mm in die Erde in gleichem Abstand von ihren Nachbarn auf einer Fläche von 3.600 m2 unter einer 440-kV-Freileitung errichtet wurden. VEREINIGTES KÖNIGREICH. In der Abenddämmerung sichtbar zu werden, beleuchtete das elektromagnetische Feld, das von den Stromleitungen oben auf dem Weg zur Erde ausgeht, die Röhren. “Field” verwendete ein alltägliches Glasobjekt, um ein hochgradig interaktives Kunstwerk zu erstellen, das auf vielen verschiedenen Ebenen erfolgreich war. Das Stück machte auf dramatische Weise auf das Vorhandensein des elektromagnetischen Feldes aufmerksam und machte das Unsichtbare sichtbar.

Scenario Scenery
Scenario/Scenery is a performative art installation in which the sculptural parts both act and serve as scenery. The work is inspired by the early theatre weather machines, which stood in the wings and were used to create sound effects of rain, wind and thunder. In Scenario/Scenery, these machines have mutated and been fitted with modern solar panels, which means that the energy that powers them is generated by the machines themselves. The work is designed as a theatrical stage where wind, rain, lightning and thunder machines together perform an act controlled by the rig of halogen lamps suspended above.

Tornado Dress
with Meghan Price & Maryam Golshayan
The lining of the dress has been embroidered with conductive threads and electronic components including super bright white LEDs. Three small photocells have been embroidered to the outside of the dress and detect the amount of ambient light. Depending on the quantity of light that is sensed, different flashing patterns are triggered that are reminiscent of lightning effects that can accompany severe weather situations.

Energie!
Thorsten Fleisch creates films that reveal the shapes and patterns of natural forces and phenomena. In this work he reveals what energy in one of its simplest forms looks like in motion. Energie! is a sequence of still images created on light-sensitive photographic paper. The artist exposed dozens of sheets of paper to enormous electrical discharges, each leaving its imprint as a trail of light. Animating these images reveals patterns in their flow of energy, akin to tracing the flow of electricity at each moment of a lightning strike. As the images are photographs created without cameras, they are records of single moments. Accordingly we see dozens of split-second documents animated to reveal the shape and power of energy.

Cloud
The hand-bent steel substructure of the sculpture is covered in a skin of incandescent light bulbs (new and burnt out), and rear-lit from within by 250 compact fluorescent bulbs, pulling a total power of approximately 20 amps (the equivalent of two household outlets  ).Each of these bulbs is attached to a pull-string, allowing viewers to control the illumination of the structure – like lightning in the CLOUD above them.

Faraday dress

While the odds of you getting hit by lightning is approximately one to one octillion, Dutch designer Anouk Wipprecht and music performance group Arcattack have created a wearable a metal dress that discharges one million volts of electricity. Part futuristic, part anime-meets-high fashion, the dress comprises metal plates, 600 rings of chain mail, 3D ‘plasma ball’ mounts on the shoulders and a spiked helmet with a grille on the front.

Symphony in D Minor

‘Symphony in D Minor’ is an interactive sound and video installation on an epic scale. A thunderstorm contained within a series of large hand cast resin sculptures, each individual form is a unique instrument hanging from the ceiling. Suspended just within reach and activated by touch, the viewer sets the symphony in motion by pushing the forms through the air to trigger the various sound elements of the storm. Sensors relay individual recordings of thunder, lightning, wind and rain with alternating intensities to a full-scale sound system. Acting as both conductor and musician, the viewer creates an evolving composition out of atmospheric sounds, forging an environment that envelops the audience. Housed within each piece are 2 video projectors employing mapping software to evenly fill the surface of the forms. Like giant illuminated pendulums each sculpture radiates video projections that in their dormant state display abstractions of water droplets and slow moving clouds. As the sensors detect movement different ranges initiate more visual elements of the storm. Once activated, the form then shifts to a swirling torrent of clouds.

Ian Charnas

In the performance Tesla coils generate a massive voltage, creating lightning directed by a pre-composed musical score. Charnas stands between the coils, protected by his chain-mail suit, which conducts the electricity to the ground without electrocuting him. “Each lightning bolt could kill me,” he told me, “but thanks to the Faraday effect I’m shielded in a full body metal suit and my little body stays at zero volts potential.”