A sculpture that generates artificial lightning in arcs as much as 50 feet long will be on public view for the first, and perhaps last, time this weekend in San Francisco.
The Electrum Project is in its final testing period at a waterfront site before it is shipped Monday to the New Zealand collector who commissioned the piece.
The structure consists of the world's largest Tesla coil (briefly, impressive-looking spark generators most familiar from the lab scenes in any number of Frankenstein movies) hidden within a four-story tower. When the juice is on, the tower emits continuous lightning in all directions. The project was built by a San Francisco-based group called Lightning on Demand and sculptor/architect Eric Orr.
The group started in 1996 with the idea of building a lightning research site with two 10-story towers throwing off 300-foot bolts. Funding is still being sought for that project.
This weekend's tests, at San Francisco's Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard, are open to the public. If you're in the area, details are on the Lightning on Demand Web site.
