Process 

1906 Meat Grinder With Abstruse Latent Image of Frustration Attached

1983-1987
Assemblage with television parts, neon and plasma globe
44 x 23 x 23 inches
A plasma globe and neon react to touch. A magnet contorts the line on the screen.
Collection of The Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, TX

A 1966 zenith television was dissected and it’s parts redistributed into a cabinet. The tubes in the cabinet light up along with the picture tube, which projects only the horizontal signal rotated to move the line on the screen into a diagonal position. I provided a magnet that will distort the line as it’s moved across the screen. The plasma globe (a large light bulb) at the top of the piece contains a sparking discharge. Its similar to the lightning globes found in novelty shops, but in 1984 there were none. A friend and I inadvertently stumbled upon the effect. I was determined to prove to him that a light bulb will not light up if we touch it to the wire that makes a long purple lightning bolt when we pull it off the high voltage rectifier tube! (My science-y friends and I played with a lot of sparkey things in those days). I also found that a neon tube will light when it gets near the plasma globe, so that was included as well. The idea of frustration was present in all these electrical activities, in that there is an effective manipulation by the viewer of the neon, picture tube, lights and plasma, but there can be only limited physical contact with the actual electrons imprisoned behind the glass. Easy to manipulate, impossible to touch. The roles are reversed, however, if one touches the base of the plasma globe. There one will receive a mild shock sending ones finger back involuntarily which will then draw a thin purple spark and the air will fill with the smell of singed flesh.