NEW YORK — Daredevil stuntman David Blaine lit up New York's Pier 54 on Friday for his latest high voltage feat. The illusionist is scheduled to spend three days and nights standing in the middle of a million volts of electric currents streamed by Tesla coils. The stunt is called “Electrified: One Million Volts Always On.” “Electrified” also is being streamed on YouTube, thanks to computing company Intel. Viewing stations are located in London, Beijing, Tokyo and Sydney. Viewers at the stations are able to control the coils. The 39-year-old Blaine is wearing a chainmail bodysuit as a barrier between himself and the electric currents. Blaine's past stunts include hanging upside down over Central Park, being buried alive and encased in a block of ice. During the performance, Blaine is standing on a 20-foot-high platform on the pier, with purplish arcs of lightning shooting out of his hands and the top of his head. Blaine's stainless-steel chain-mail suit is a Faraday suit, an adaptation of the principle of the Faraday cage, in which an enclosure of highly conductive material shields whatever is within the enclosure from an electric field. It's a version of the protective suit that some linemen wear when working on high-voltage power lines, or that hobbyists make for themselves when playing with homemade Tesla coils. — Agencies
