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]

"My first observations positively terrified me as there was present in them something mysterious, not to say supernatural, and I was alone in my laboratory at night."
- Nikola Tesla 1901

"The sounds I am listening to every night at first appear to be human voices conversing back and forth in a language I cannot understand. I find it difficult to imagine that I am actually hearing real voices from people not of this planet. There must be a more simple explanation that has so far eluded me."
- Nikola Tesla 1918

Is it science or the supernatural? Check out the video to see what the radio is capable of and, if your are so inclined, build one and decide for yourself. Needless to say, this would be a hit at a Halloween party. Hit the link for a complete set of instructions. [Instructables]

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.

/

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.

Indeed, the instructions point out that a strong enclosure is required just in case the whole damn thing explodes in your face. But, in the end, your risk will be rewarded with a machine that takes down a pencil at over 2200 rpm. Hey, why not scale this thing up for a wood chipper? Put the whole neighborhood at risk. [Hacked Gadgets]

The numbers broke down to about $20 million in revenue and $1 million in profit. That $465 million is set to fund development of the company's first sedan offering, the $50,000 Tesla Model S. Not stumbling anymore, it seems. [CNN]

People love cheating death by standing right under some Tesla Coils going crazy, protecting themselves in Faraday Cages.

They also like playing music through Tesla Coils, especially super nerdy music like the Zelda theme song.

And people even use his toys to protect their computers, although that ones isn't all to practical. You can see that one in action above.

So for all that you've done for us, we thank you Mr. Tesla. Here's to another couple of centuries of shocking fun.

Think about it: The only time you'd go to a fair (and not be miserable) is during a sunny summer's day, just the right time to absorb a ton of solar energy and use it to power rides like a carousel and Ferris wheel. The fair also featured an edible garden, a solar-powered audio show and a display of electric vehicles from Tesla as well as retrofitted classic cars. Hell, anything to make a county fair exciting again, right? [Inhabitant]

From WiredBiz's twitter feed:

A sub $10,000, zero-emissions car will be the most desirable consumer electronics device in history.

Apparently, the quote came up while discussing Tesla with founder Elon Musk. When asked how he is reacting to the Detroit meltdown, Wired editor Chris Anderson noted in his twitter feed that Musk would like to buy a car factory and build 100,000 cars a year. That having been said, do you agree or disagree with Agassi's assessment? [Wired Biz]

During the presentation, they provide some background on Nikola Tesla's experiments and attempt to recreate them by powering a light bulb wirelessly at various distances. It works of course—in 1899 Tesla managed to transmit 100 million volts of power over a distance of 26 miles where it lit up a bank of 200 light bulbs and an electric motor. So why haven't figured out how to do this on a large scale over the last 100 years? [Fora]

The different atomic structure of the battery and knowledge of nanotechnology are what make this battery different. They used "mesoporous carbon, a material that presents a highly uniform pore structure at nanoscale level," to allow for a more efficient design:

The team assembled a nanostructure of carbon rods separated by empty channels, sulfur was then melted to fill the tiny voids thanks to capillary forces. All the spaces were uniformly filled with sulfur, thus maximizing the surface area in direct contact with carbon and boosting battery efficiency.

We've been needing a new battery technology for awhile now, especially for electric cars, so here's hoping they can get these lithium-sulfur batteries into production as soon as possible and that they deliver on the possibilities we see here. If it really is capable of three times the batter life, we're talking about something like a 730-mile range on a Tesla, 20 hours on a MacBook, or half a week on an iPod, all without added bulk or expense! [Gizmag via DVICE]

According to the numbers (we only know that it's "double digit millions"), Jalopnik speculates that Tesla's valuation is actually less than Twitter. [CNN Money via Jalopnik]

After his work on alternating current made him a rich, famous, and respected electrical inventor, Tesla had no trouble securing funds (about $3 million in today's money) for what was seen as the next frontier: Wireless transmission. Tesla built a massive tower on a site he named Wardenclyffe, in southern New York, to experiment with the beginnings of what would become radio waves.

But when he was beaten to the punch by Italian Marconi (here we can shake our fists, a la Colbert, and yell: MARCONI!!!!), he decided he was actually going to transmit wireless energy, not just information, out to those who couldn't afford it. His investors, seeing no trail to profit, abandoned him, and as turned out, his tower was in no way capable of doing any such thing in the first place.

Wardenclyffe is a maze of Tesla lore; giant batteries without documentation, rumors of extensive secret tunnels surrounding the site, and half-finished experiments are all part of its now-dilapidated charm. It's fallen into disrepair in recent years, and is currently littered with the throwaways of damn teenagers with their damn beer cans, but now with the possibility that the property could be sold as mere real estate, Tesla fanatics are up in arms.

Tesla's admirers stress that this 16-acre estate is his most important workshop, and that any other fate but a museum is an insult to the ambitious genius's memory. The company that currently owns it is open to such a change, but is not in a position to simply donate the site. The site seems fascinating, and we really do hope somebody steps up and gives it the new life as a museum it deserves. [New York Times, image courtesy of New York Times]

The fortwo is a tiny, tiny car, and we're sort of surprised it took so long to be fitted with electric guts. But the Tesla-Smart version still only has a range of 100 miles, and promises to cost even more than the gas or diesel versions, which already retail for about $20,000. Our brothers at Jalopnik estimate this version will come in even pricier. It's got a ton of power, since it's featuring the same motor and gearbox as the Tesla Roadster, but in this kind of car we'd expect to see a little economy of power rather than superfast acceleration. [AutoblogGreen]

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]

The current distance record, a 275-mile run completed by a Solectria Sunrise, is technically longer than the Tesla's 241-mile achievement. But the Tesla's battery showed about 38 miles worth of juice left in the battery, which, if verified, would top the Solectria's record. The Tesla roadster bested a modified Porsche 911 and several of Mitsubishi's new crop of electric vehicles.

We should note that the Tesla was driven by a company staffer, who surely knows every trick to getting the best mileage out of the Roadster. The course consists of windy mountain roads in addition to standard highway driving, so the average speed was only about 28 mph, with a high of about 56 mph. Still, a nearly 280-mile range is a serious achievement for an electric car in production. [Reg Hardware]

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]

In addition to that, there's the center console's controls, which are full touchscreen, can manipulate your iPod, Google Maps as well as streaming radio. There's HD, AUX, USB and iPod input to the car, so that covers the major device you'd be able to use too. The current design looks really busy at first glance, but that's probably because the entire console takes the place of what used to be a slew of buttons and knobs and dials.

The RFID tag is also very interesting. When you walk up to the car, the Model S detects your RFID keytag and pops out the handles for you. When you want to start up the car, there's no start button. You just sit there and wait for the car to detect your RFID presence.