Happy New Year from Arcattack! This is Parsec with our wrap-up report. This past First Night was one of the best New Year celebrations that I have ever been to! The weather was perfect, there was interactive art, music, performance art, fireworks, digital media, art cars… and the Resolution Clock was one of the finest burn spectacles I have had the pleasure of attending. Auditorium Shores was a fine backdrop for a wonderful evening of lights and sound and friends as we ushered in yet another year of opportunity.
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It was made better by the fact that we had friends in from out of town to share the New Year with! Steve Ward came down from Chicago and assisted us with some hardware and software upgrades. Pretty much as soon as he got off the plane, he and Joe went to work and kept going right up until the performance. Tesla coils take lots of love. Even though he worked most of the visit, we managed to take him out for one good night on the town Friday. We showed him around 6th street for awhile, then to some other clubs around town. We painted the town red and closed down the bars and I think I heard him mumbling about moving down here sometime before I went home.
img src=”http://c2.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/58/l_35e44a41baf146f989030b70e66b0835.jpg” alt=”Steve and Joe puzzle over some gremlin activity.” />
As for the show for First Night, all I can say is WOW! It was an awesome experience all around. There was little wind, we had a wonderful new centerpiece crafted by Patrick Sullivan from Iron Lion Metalworks (special thanks to Austin Green Art for letting us use their warehouse space!), and the crowd was festive. The HGMB stage provided wonderful entertainment while we set up and we got to hear not only a 15 minute version of Hamlet, but a 3 minute and a 10 second one, as well! I brought the BBQ pit and we had a lunch of hot dogs and flavor-aid and then I put on a brisket for dinner. Good food, good fun, comfortable chairs, and we even brought a propane heater for when it started to get a bit nippy. With all the essentials covered, all that was left was to have a great time!
img src=”http://ping.fm/TcsqK” border=”0″ alt=”First Night Austin”/>
The performance was wonderful! There were people as far as the eye could see; not even sure how many there were. All we know is they were such a wonderful crowd, and so LOUD! Wow, Austin can really bring the noise! The coils were looking awesome and everything was going smoothly, but then we had a few technical difficulties. First, we started having some flash-over (when the secondary coil arcs to the primary coil and strike ring) on the right coil, so we had to turn it down a little bit. Then, during the oh so popular Zelda/Justin Timberlake mix-up, there was a huge POP from the left coil and it went dead. I could sense the crowd tense; there was no mistaking that sound.
img src=”http://ping.fm/lpLRA” border=”0″ alt=”Austin Electrified!”/>
Well, it turned out that one of the transistors had exploded! We had spent the last few weeks doing some hardware upgrades to the machine, and when it was put back together, a screw on the transistor didn’t get tightened well enough. Woops. So, here is a picture of the blown up transistor, right next to one that isn’t blown up for reference. You can see in the picture the arcing to the bolt terminal that caused the failure! Special thanks to the guy in the audience that donated $5 to me directly after the show to pitch in on repair cost. It really meant a lot to us.
img src=”http://c2.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/52/l_5b287c330a2142a1a39a59770e074335.jpg” border=”0″ alt=”Exploded!”/>
Thanks once again for a wonderful New Year’s Eve, Austin!