Of course, you may not be able to play something as complex as the themes from your favorite video games, but you might be able to put together a little rendition of Chopsticks or Funkytown without having to worry about electrocuting yourself. Hit the link to give it a shot. [ArcAttack]

We gather around the group in a circle, about 8 or 10 feet away from the Tesla coils as the band performs. This is not some "don't want to dance in front of the stage" kind of teenage awkwardness—if you stand too close when the band plays, you might actually get electrocuted.

When the lights go down, a loud buzz generates, followed by streaks of lighting into the air. Then the music begins, followed by the sound of drums that are precise as can be. What follows is an overload of light and sound that is pure amazing, a melange of familiar melodies from our favorite video games (Mario and Zelda themes), TV shows (Airwolf) and pop songs ("Sexyback").

Once the band stops playing, we still can't roam freely. First, they must discharge the coils, ridding them of any stray lightning bolts that might be trapped inside.

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Consisting of a pair of Tesla coils—plus a pair of LED-equipped robotic drums and an Open Labs sound console—the ArcAttack experience is largely automated, suggestive of a future era when a musical performance isn't about the people playing the instruments, but rather the technology involved.

ArcAttack hails from Austin, Texas and certainly don't fit the mold of what most consider a band should be. But that's a good thing.

John Di Prima is the man behind the boards, responsible for the execution of the live show. He controls the coils and drums, plus mixing in a few new sounds during the set. He's also responsible for most of the songwriting and drum programming.

Patrick Brown, aka Parsec, is the master of ceremonies, decked out in steampunk-esque attire consisting of a Faraday Suit with a string of lights that react with the Tesla coils, plus the requisite lightning-proof goggles. He's the link between the crowd and the show. He found the Di Prima brothers at an Austin Burning Man event and jokes that he's managed to not get kicked out yet.

Joe Di Prima designs, builds and maintains everything for the group, serving as the technician when the show is on the road. When they're composing and recording, he plays guitar. With a background in electronics repair, Joe eventually linked up with the engineering department at the University of Texas, where he first learned about the magic of Tesla coils.

I took a few minutes to interview ArcAttack—what makes them who they are—besides the Tesla coils, of course...

——-

Gizmodo: What does your setup consist of?

Joe: It would be two DRSSTC (Dual Resident Solid State Tesla Coil) units which are MIDI controlled. There's a fiber optic cable running to some digital logic boards that are in the Tesla coils.

John: The Open Labs MiKO MIDI console hosts the PC Software (Fruity Loops) that we use to actually sequence the music.

The MiKO is just a Windows machine with a bunch of nice MIDI interfaces, cased in metal—which is nice because we have a lot of EMF emitted from the coils. I actually used to run it off my laptop, but it would crash all the time.

Patrick: The drum machine has a solenoid for every drum, and they're MIDI controlled also...from the MiKO.

Gizmodo: How did you get the idea to create a musical show using Tesla coils? Had it been done before this?

Joe: When we did it originally, it was the first time it had been done in this manner. There are a few ways that you can audio modulate a Tesla coil—this way is known as PRM modulation. Now there are a few dozen people that picked up on it, but nobody does it to the scale that we do. It's still fairly new, and surprisingly still fairly unknown.

When I first saw a solid state Tesla coil in operation, I understood how it worked. After a few minutes of playing with it, I got the idea that, many years later, I put into practice.

Gizmodo: Who are some of your musical and tech influences?

John: Well obviously Nikola Tesla. For music, we all have pretty different tastes. But the cool thing with our project is that we can do anything from Pantera to the Chicken Dance and people would dig it. I listen to electronic rock, Kraftwerk, Daft Punk...if I could do a show with Daft Punk, you could shoot me afterward.

Joe: I didn't know what music was until three years ago. For tech influences, hard to say, but Faraday, all my mentors at all the repair shops, my dad (who was a biomedical engineer) and Steve Ward, the father of the DRSSTC, who I met at the University of Texas.

Gizmodo: What are some of the weirdest/favorite/disastrous shows you've played?

John: Joe had to tackle a cop once.

Joe: Yeah the cops had come shut down this rave we were playing at, and the Tesla coils were still running. He was coming over to shut our stuff off, not knowing exactly what it was, and he was walking straight into the Tesla coils. So I grabbed him and pushed him back. Amazingly he did not Tase me. He was actually kinda grateful. Funniest part is, after they kicked everyone out, they walked around and asked if we could turn the stuff back on.

Patrick: My favorite show so far was when we played DragonCon in Atlanta a few weeks ago. We did the Mad Scientist Ball. We had our big Tesla coils and a Faraday cage, and revealed our new stage show, which assisted people in transforming themselves into true joy...by being bathed in the Tesla coil rays.

During our stage performance, there were about 15 people that we put into the cage, and this one guy named Dr. Satan had big metal wings that he put onto his back. We get him up there, but the cage is kinda small, and he has metal sticking out all over his body. So we tell him "don't move." Soon the entire crowd started chanting along. That was pretty cool. [And obviously Dr. Satan lived through it.]

John: We were in the Netherlands for two weeks, and we played a heavy metal fest where they put us in front of this church that was lit all demonic looking. On our stage, there were these big glass viewing areas where you could see the deceased founders of the town. I think that's pretty much the most epic thing ever. Heavy metal music through lightning over visible graves.

Q: What is the one gadget you can't live without?

Joe: My iPhone.

Patrick: My Dell laptop.

John: The Open Labs MiKO console. If it was human, I'd marry it.

Gizmodo Gallery 2009
Groupe
267 Elizabeth Street
New York, NY 10012

Gallery Dates:
September 23rd-27th

Times:

9/22 Tuesday
Media Day by appointment only. For info please contact gallery@gizmodo.com.

9/23 Wednesday
12-8

9/24 Thursday
12-8

9/25 Friday
12-8

9/26 Saturday
11-8
9-? - Live Musical Performance

9/27 Sunday
11-6

Read more about our Giz Gallery 09 here, follow @gizgallery on Twitter and see what else we'll be playing with at the event.And special thanks to Toyota's Prius — without their sponsorship, there would be no Gizmodo Gallery.

ArcAttack is the six man crew who makes this technological spectacle possible, and in addition to the two music making Tesla coils in their performance, they also have a robotic set of drums and a guy walking around the coils in a chain mail Faraday suit. And there's LIGHTNING.

But even better, ArcAttack will be performing three times daily inside the gallery, so you'll have plenty of opportunities to check out the singing Tesla coils. Stop by any day around 1p, 4p or 7p and catch a glimpse of what makes ArcAttack so awesome. And while you listen to their musical virtuosity, you can also check out electric motobikes, get your phone laser etched, or play some Halo on a 103-inch television.

Gizmodo Gallery 2009
Groupe
267 Elizabeth Street
New York, NY 10012

Gallery Dates:
September 23rd-27th

Times:

9/22 Tuesday
Media Day by appointment only. For info please contact gallery@gizmodo.com.

9/23 Wednesday
12-8

9/24 Thursday
12-8

9/25 Friday
12-8

9/26 Saturday
11-8
9-? - Live Musical Performance

9/27 Sunday
11-6

Read more about our Giz Gallery 09 here, follow @gizgallery on Twitter and see what else we'll be playing with at the event. And special thanks to Toyota's Prius — without their sponsorship, there would be no Gizmodo Gallery.

Now, we've seen Terren and Tesla Down Under's work before here at Gizmodo, most notably when he put his son in a car and zapped it with electricity.

This little project, however, put him in the hot seat. Note the electricity shooting out of his sneaker.

Lucky for us all, Terren meticulously documented the entire project with photos and safety-related commentary ("The wig is not ideal and really needs a haircut. I couldn't light it with sparks so fire risk seems low").

Terren also outfitted some of the tests with a pentagram boundary, which had nothing to do with Tesla coils or electricity, of course, but certainly heightened the sense of batshit insanity surrounding this little venture. [Tesla Down Under via Neatorama]

ArcAttack brings sexy technology back when he plays the Zelda Theme Song remixed with Justin Timberlake at Dragon*Con 2008. [ArcAttack via Vimeo via BoingBoingGadgets]

If there's something strange in your neighborhood, who ya gonna call? GHOSTBUSTERS! [myself248]

Probably one of the most recognized theme songs in the world—and a song that has probably been played on every single instrument imaginable—it would be a sin not to include a clip of Nintendo's Mario Bros being played on singing Tesla coils too. [megavoltmeister]

Watch as Patrick from ArcAttack dresses up in a suit of chain metal and conducts the Imperial March from a Tesla coil. [darkdream11]

Although it may be smaller than the others, this Soild State Tesla Coil playing the Tetris theme song doesn't fail to impress. [TeslaCommander]

Where in the universe is Dr. Who going to show up next? Probably at Chattacon 09 to watch ArcAttack play his theme song on a pair of Tesla coils. [joedog158]

It would be a fatality if you didn't think listening to the Mortal Kombat theme song through musical Tesla coils is cool. FINISH HIM! [moonstar5]

Inspect her gadget? No, Inspector Gadget—on an audio-modded mini tesla coil, that is. [Norwegenkai]

Can anyone explain to me how you program a Tesla Coil to do this? [YouTube]

The electrode in the pic above was attached to a rotating apex, once turned on, the revolving surface was fed by an electricity supply, which gave rise to the effect above via a multiplier. Using various photography techniques, the images above were captured. Disconcertingly, the hot electrode was quite close to the user's face, maintaining a constant distance away by only a few centimeters. We have to ask; when will this madness stop? Electrocution is not cool. [Tesladownunder]

Twin Solid State Musical Tesla coils playing Mario Bros theme song at the 2007 Lightning on the Lawn Teslathon sponsored by DC Cox (Resonance Research Corp) in Baraboo WI. The music that you hear is coming from the sparks that these two identical high power solid state Tesla coils are generating. There are no speakers involved. The Tesla coils stand 7 feet tall and are each capable of putting out over 12 foot of spark. They are spaced about 18 feet apart. The coils are controlled over a fiber optic link by a single laptop computer. Each coil is assigned to a midi channel which it responds to by playing notes that are programed into the computer software.

Because Tesla coils can't actually shoot long, single bursts of lightning at a target, wires were strung between the coil and its targets to act as a path for the energy to move down. The coil then sent out three-foot bursts along the wires. By using the longer exposure, the bursts all strung together to look like a continuous shock.

As for the figures, they're all handmade, from the cutout of the zapped Allied soldier to the Tesla soldier to the engineer. Be sure to check out the project page for a detailed breakdown of how it was completed with plenty of photos. [Project Page via Neatorama]