So this year’s festival starts off with a couple of huge Tesla coils parked back on the Maindeck of the Ars Electronica Quarter. Witnessing 26 kilowatts of power being converted into giant 4-meter long bolts of artificial lightning with almost a million volts of electricity modulated at audio frequencies to produce music is impressive enough, but then you have a masked fellow walk out wearing a 20-kilogram metal suit who starts dancing and interacting (conducting? eh, hem…) with the bolts and you’ve really got a show! This was The Tesla Orchestra. Maybe it was really Elvis…or maybe just a smart ape…’cause everything began with the Strauss tune that we’ve become so familiar with (and I’m not talking about Johann’s “…Danube” – tho we were right there) and just a few seconds into the performance there was a fireball that the performer swiftly and deftly maneuvered his way out of. On closer inspection of the video, it appears that the two fireballs were apparently intentional. A bit of a relief really. A couple of shaky videos of mine followed by a more professional one from Fabian Mohr:
(thanks to Fabian Mohr)