Think about spending a month, a week or even a day without electricity (yes, batteries are included in the ban). You will surely appreciate that it is no exaggeration to suggest that electricity has afforded us the most dramatic enhancement of physical ease and comfort since the ancient man first discovered fire and then invented the wheel. The closest we come to encountering deux ex machina in real life is the invisible gift of electricity that keeps the world humming. Even when we seek alternative energy, the quest is largely focused on producing electric power by cleaner means. Alessandro Volta, Michael Faraday, Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla are the names of stalwarts that come to mind when we think of understanding and harnessing electricity. My high school physics teacher, a fan of Tesla, used to refer to him as The Father of Twentieth Century Physics.
Tesla’s numerous inventions and discoveries indeed constitute an astonishing body of work that made the late 19th century industrial revolution possible and touched upon almost all revolutionary advances in electrical and electromagnetic engineering that the twentieth century came to benefit from. As was pointed out in an older post, Tesla’s vision (and subsequent invention) of the Alternate Current Motor is counted among the Seven Most Wondrous Moments in Science. But Tesla, despite his scientific acumen, was also a poet and a visionary. Some of his visions were a bit too "far out" for the sensible scientific community. His brilliant and precise engineering mind also wandered into a universe that lay beyond Carl Sagan’s cosmos, veering into a spiritual playground that Shirley MacLaine would recognize. Such flights of fancy helped spread his reputation among the devotees of pseudo-science and New Age occult.
Tesla, the engineer/ scientist gifted with the ability of cutting edge dreams of machines and a fuzzy vision of life, is making a come back in the world of contemporary arts. That Tesla was also a bit of a moralist who did not chase the almighty dollar, take undue advantage of his colleagues and patrons (some of whom did not reciprocate the favor) and died a pauper, alone in a hotel room, adds to the mystique of the man. A recent article in Newsweek describes Tesla as the scientist who has become a real turn-on to hipsters of all varieties. The Cult of the Volt is raging among artists, writers, musicians and filmmakers.
[Yet] to a growing group of artists, writers, musicians and filmmakers, Tesla has become an inspiration. "He thought of invention as an art form, and that appeals to artists," says Samantha Hunt, author of the new novel "The Invention of Everything Else," a ficti
onalized depiction of Tesla’s life. Laurie Anderson’s performance piece "Like a Stream" was inspired by a photograph of Tesla in front of one of his enormous coils. Paul Auster discovered Tesla while writing his novel "Moon Palace" and later said he found the inventor "such a fascinating character, he threatened to throw the book out of whack." Or, as Douglas Rushkoff, who made Tesla a character in his novel "Ecstasy Club," says: "If you’re a weird kind of post-psychedelic technologically aware artist type, you gotta know Tesla."
The key to Tesla’s appeal is not only his prodigious inventions, but the sad fact that credit for his greatest ideas was usurped by more market-minded rivals. "Tesla was definitely the underdog," says Hunt, who portrays him as an eccentric who wanders to Bryant Park to talk to Goethe’s statue. Tesla was also an idealist who ripped up a $12 million contract with Westinghouse rather than see his benefactor bankrupted by the expense. This anti-materialistic bent may be what both endears him to artists and has prevented him from getting his due. "He was a horrible capitalist," Hunt says. "America tends to remember successful capitalists."
But Tesla’s making a comeback. In addition to the books by Hunt, Auster and Rushkoff, he’s appeared in a Thomas Pynchon novel and been name-checked by Aaron Sorkin. Last year David Bowie played him in the film "The Prestige." There’s even an electric car, the Tesla Roadster, being developed by Silicon Valley’s Tesla Motors. "We’re probably interested in him now because we’re having much more intimate relationships with technology," says Rushkoff. "We’re looking for a bit of soul in the machine and Tesla seems to embody that." Plus, as anyone who knows about him will tell you, Tesla had an electric personality.
Now a transition from the sublime and bizarre to the merely bizarre – today being April 1st. Ruminating over Nikola Tesla and the ubiquitous presence of electricity in our lives, I was reminded of some photos that came to me via email from a friend a few weeks ago. The hunger for electricity in a crowded nation like India gives rise to innovations (some quite dangerous) that stricter, neater, cleaner and more efficient municipalities elsewhere can barely imagine. In many Indian cities there is not only a huge demand for electric power but also some consumers resort to nefarious means of hijacking it without paying for it. The theft of electricity usually takes place from the main power lines. The result often is a jumble of wires along power poles. I have seen some such messes but nothing like the photos below. I am not sure if these images are real or photo-shopped. Be sure to click for enlargement to truly appreciate the degree of chaos.
It is not a surprise that the Microsoft techie in the last photo (who troubleshoots for you from a world away) chooses to make his own electricity! Tesla would have approved.
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