GRAFFITI RESEACRH LAB VIENNA Dedicated to outfitting graffiti- and street-artists with open source technologies for urban communication.

Powerthief from Names. on Vimeo.

The Graffiti Research Lab Vienna tool development archive is finally being brought to light. Here we present the Powerthief, an old piece of technology that we didn't come up with, but is worth reviving. By now they are mostly made redundant in every day life, and also illegal in most of central Europe. However, there are still useful applications for it in our environment today, especially if you're in need of a power-plug where there is usually none available.

The basic idea is pretty simple: in a lot of today's urban environments you can find a regular light bulb reasonably close-by. In Vienna, where this was executed, you can find one above almost every doorstep. The technology is even simpler - take the screw-cap of a regular light bulb and instead of connecting it to filaments it's being connected to a power socket.

To see how we made it and use it, we have a video we presented at the 2 year anniversary of the lovely gallery http://www.inoperable.at/
This project deals with electricity. Make sure not to blow yourself up!

You will need:

* A light bulb
* Electric cabling
* Plastic tubing to cover the cabling
* Power socket
* Epoxy
* Something to cut the tubing
* Soldering iron and solder