Saw this a few months ago, forgot to blog it, and am now disappointed to see the project may have died in the meanwhile. It's a clever blend of art, protest, and marketing called the Heatball.
"Heatball" is what German engineer Siegfried Rotthaeuser and his brother-in-law are calling regular ol' 75- and 100-watt incandescent light bulbs. Why? Because the EU has banned incandescents that exceed 60 watts, giving everyone no recourse but to buy CFLs, which contain mercury. Rotthaeuser's clever way of getting around the ban was to market the bulbs as "small heating devices" rather than light sources. As Reuters explained it,
Rotthaeuser studied EU legislation and realized that because the inefficient old bulbs produce more warmth than light -- he calculated heat makes up 95 percent of their output, and light just 5 percent -- they could be sold legally as heaters....The two engineers describe the heatballs as "action art" and as "resistance against legislation which is implemented without recourse to democratic and parliamentary processes."
The unamused government has since cracked down. Rotthaeuser sold out of his entire inventory of the 75- and 100-watt bulbs he was able to import under the Heatball ruse, but now customs is holding his second batch in a sort of light bulb Guantanamo.