Band electrifies, educates campus

Standing in front of the Tower while 1 million volts of electricity danced off his hands, UT alumnus Patrick Brown can say his return to campus was literally an electrifying experience.

Brown acted as a human lightning rod as part of a performance Wednesday night with his band, ArcAttack, which performed to a crowd of hundreds on the Main Mall. The event, hosted by the UT Society of Physics Students, was part electro-noise rock concert and part mad-scientist lab experiment. The band consists of Austin residents Brown, Joe DiPrima, Tony Smith and Craig Newswanger.

Nodding their heads to the computer-stylized notes and rapid beats, audience members also got a physics lesson while watching the jolting electricity display.

The band produced the electricity through Tesla coils, high-voltage resonance transformers that produce 500,000 volts of electricity each, DiPrima said. By turning the coils on and off, the band created a pattern of pitches for their songs based on pulses transmitted by the coils.

For instance, 440 hertz will produce an A note, which requires the band to send 440 pulses, DiPrima said.

During the performance, the band asked for a brave audience member to participate in the show by stepping into a metal cage in between the two sets of Tesla coils. Visual communication freshman Shae Schoenle said he was a little scared but wanted to do it for the thrill.

After Schoenle scrunched his over-6-foot frame into the cage, ArcAttack performed their original song “Tremelololo!” while bolts of electricity struck the cage. When the song ended, Schoenle casually stepped out of the cage and proclaimed the experience as “so cool, but it smelled weird.”

ArcAttack concluded its performance with encore performances of the Zelda and Mario theme songs.

Hayley Manning, president of the UT Society of Physics Students, said she wanted to do something more grandiose this year with the normally low-key organization.

With help from the University’s physics department and revenue generated by selling society T-shirts, which read “Physics is like Sex,” the organization put on its first concert.
“In the past, we just [had] weekly meetings and lectures,” Manning said. “People would just try to sit through the lectures for the free pizza, and even I’d be falling asleep. We just wanted to throw a fun, big event this time.”

ArcAttack plans to record its first album early 2010, following a New Year’s performance in Austin.

Be the first to comment on this article!

Add comment


I am not posting spam. I understand posting spam or other comments that are unrelated to this article will cause my comment to be flagged for deletion and possibly cause my IP address to be permanently banned from this server.

Enter the characters in the image above:

log out