Hook two solid state Tesla coils up with a laptop and channel midi through to get sparks synchronized with the Super Mario Bros. themesong. I thought this was fun before I realized that the music is actually coming from the Tesla coils — there are NO speakers! At that point I flipped open the head of my desk statue and pressed the red button, opening the secret passage to the Artificial Cave where I wrote this entry.

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This was recorded at the 2007 Lightining on the Lawn Teslathon; an event held in Baraboo Wisconsin. The coils are 2 meters tall and can generate around 3.5 meter sparks. From the video’s description on YouTube:

[...] 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.

These coils were constructed by Steve Ward and Jeff Larson. Video was captured by Terry Blake. What is not obvious is how loud the coils are. They are well over 110dB If you look at another You Tube video which is from a different angle, you can hear the echo off the building and get a better idea of how loud it is.

Here’s the other video they mention:

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Super Mario not your cup of tea? How about something classical:

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Apparantly, the guys who made these are going to start selling them under the product name Zeusaphone in February 2008.

Links and References

• via electro^plankton and Beyond the Beyond
• Tesla Coil on Wikipedia