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arte-Theme
- Evening
Under Tension
"The impact of electricity"
Thursday, April 25th 2002 -
22:45pm
Camera:
Manfred Hulverscheidt, Antje Schäfer
Sound, Assistence (Director and Editing):
Simin Mohammadi Coordination:
Cornelia Volmer Book, Mixing, Edit:
Manfred Hulverscheidt Production:
HDTVideo, Berlin, arte/ZDF, Mainz, Tag/Traum, Cologne.
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A
mysterious force, an invisible hand that steers, directs and
regulates. Difficult to define in a few sentences, the select
few schooled in natural sciences might use the term "transport
of load particles". The rest of us call it electricity.
The 1,883 pages of a contemporary electronics catalogue display
some 50,000 articles bearing wondrous names: "hot' &
'cold conductors", "monostable TK-print relays",
"electrolyte capacitor", "foot angle transformer",
"choking coil" alongside more familiar ones like
"monitor", "dictation machine" or "CD
burner". It's as if you'd unscrewed the back of the TV,
emptied the contents on the floor and given every single item
a name and function, blindly trusting it would all make perfect
sense to someone else putting a set together. Flicking through
the catalogue, I discover that for years I've unwittingly
been using an "interim dimmer" on my standard lamp.
With a vocabulary as impenetrable as his tangle of cables,
it's better that the portrait of our Electroman should not
be over-burdened with lengthy descriptions.
Explanations are rare in this film, but greater store is set
on those few things that are spelt out. American historian
Thomas
P. Hughes, author of the book
"American Genesis" reports on his research into
electricity. Compared to independent inventors like Thomas
Edison, he sees his occupation as an attempt "to understand
the essence of the American character, at least for me".
He reminds us that we're only just beginning to grasp the
consequences of the activities of those individuals who, inspired
by the potential of electricity, created inventions which
professionals went on to adapt in order to build systems.
System building is at the core of the electrical age.
The gloomy warmth of Edison's electric bulb was replaced by
the penetrating cold of modern light. Our forefathers calculated
the explosive power of atomic weapons in the only way possible
- electrically generated simulations - and then set them off
with gigantic bolts of electricity. Self-made men like Nicola
Tesla, Lee de Forest, Edwin Armstrong and many others sought
out their problems and solutions independently of teams, only
for their individual creativity to be replaced by the R&D-departments
of big companies.
A "secondary nature" arose, both a replacement for
the natural environment and one that seems to withdraw systematically
from the influence of the productive man. "I don‘t
think we realized or our fathers and forefathers and mothers
who lived around 1900 I don‘t think they realised the
responsibility they had for the world they were creating.“
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