I saw this a few days ago, and I was blown away by it's awesomesaucedness.
That's right, awesome-sauced-ness.
Meet Melanie Hoff, a woman who figured out that 15,000 volts attached to a wood panel will result in a beautiful wood erosion technique that is really quite stunning:
15,000 Volts from Melanie Hoff on Vimeo.
From the video:
High voltage wood erosion.
Soundtrack: Aire De Zamba by Agustín Barrios Mangoré
To learn when wood pieces will be available to buy, send me a message with your email or follow me on twitter.
The finished board: https://melaniehoff.squarespace.com/#/15000volts/
Melanie-Hoff.com
https://twitter.com/Melanie_Hoff
What Melanie is doing here is creating what we call a Lichtenberg figure, which is what happens on occasion when high voltage bursts of electricity run through some sort of insulating medium. This could be glass, acrylic, wood (in Melanie's case, or even skin, in the case of human lighting strikes. Like this:
Also, here's the case of around two million volts having been passed through a block of acrylic. Notice the three-dimensionality of this work!
Wow. I wonder what this would look like cranked up to, say, 100,000 volts? Yeah, that's why I don't play with electricity outside of the confines of distribution equipment. Consequently it's also why I don't ride a motorcycle or 4-wheeler. I'd give myself a lifespan of about 3 weeks.
Check out Melanie's other works, Melanie's Twitter feed, and Melanie's Squarespace page! Cool stuff!
Thanks to Wikipedia for the non-Melanie images!