SEBASTOPOL, CA–(Marketwire – April 6, 2010) – Maker Faire, the world’s premier DIY (Do-It-Yourself) event, celebrates its 5th annual Bay Area festival on May 22nd and 23rd, 2010 at the San Mateo County Event Center.
What:
Maker Faire Bay Area 2010
Produced by the folks who bring you MAKE Magazine, Maker Faire celebrates things people create themselves — from rockets and robots, to DIY science and technology, to sustainable foods and upcycled clothes.
More than 600 Makers are scheduled to share their inventions. The festival is expected to draw 95,000 attendees from across the state, the country, and beyond.
New this year at Maker Faire Bay Area 2010 will be the Raygun Gothic Rocketship, a kitschy, retro-futuristic 40-foot rocket that debuted this year at Burning Man. Also new this year: the Flaming Lotus Girls present Soma: a sculpture that translates the anatomy of neurons into metal, fire, and light, magnifying the microscopic world to epic scale; ArcAttack!, a truly ‘electrifying’ performance by the creators of the original Singing Tesla Coils; and The Orb, a spherical surface display that can project any image or video.
Can be purchased online. And starting April 16th, tickets will be available at the following Whole Foods Market locations: San Mateo, Redwood City and Potrero Hill.
Weekend passes are only available online or onsite at the full price. Special advance deals on weekend passes, group discounts, subscription specials and more can be found online before the May 12th deadline at: http://www.makerfaire.com/bayarea/2010/tickets/
About Maker Faire Maker Faire is being held on May 22 & 23, 2010 at the San Mateo County Event Center. Started in San Mateo, California in 2006, and now expanding to Detroit and New York, Maker Faire is the premier event for grassroots American innovation. Held annually in each of these locations, the event may expand elsewhere in the future. Maker Faire is supported by MAKE Magazine and O’Reilly Media, the premier information source for leading-edge computer technologies. The company’s books, conferences and web sites bring to light the knowledge of technology innovators. For more information about Maker Faire, please visit http://www.makerfaire.com.
About O’Reilly O’Reilly Media spreads the knowledge of innovators through its books, online services, magazines and conferences. Since 1978, O’Reilly Media has been a chronicler and catalyst of cutting-edge development, homing in on the technology trends that really matter and spurring their adoption by amplifying “faint signals” from the alpha geeks who are creating the future. An active participant in the technology community, the company has a long history of advocacy, meme-making and evangelism.
When we first decided to build the Faraday cage, we really didn’t know how the audience would react. “Surely they will be too afraid to partake!”, we said. We were so very wrong. At the first debut of the cage, we had so many people clambering to get picked, and unfortunately hadn’t developed a solid system for choosing victims participants. Honestly we still don’t. At DragonCon, someone even tried to bribe Joe in order to gain access. Tony and I eventually decided that, to be completely fair and unbiased, we would barter. Jokes for cage access! So far it’s my favorite system for getting volunteers.
Although not afraid to get into the cage, most people, when actually given the opportunity to get inside the cage, tend to stand there in awe. University of Dallas is another story altogether. At this show particularly, the focus of the cage segment of our show shifted from our Tesla coils, to a cage dance off between rivaling students. If there is anything I’m one hundred percent behind it’s a dance off. Hats off to you UD and your wicked dope step game, and thanks for having us!
Last week on Wednesday, ArcAttack had the pleasure of performing at our first high school gig.
I remember being in high school and forced to go to countless boring assemblies where some performer would do his best to relate to us youngsters and trick us into learning valuable lessons with the power of infotainment. Usually they were along the lines of why drugs are bad, you shouldn’t drink and drive, the dangers of huffing gasoline and other things that fall in the “DON’T DO THIS” category. That was all well and good, but I always thought the subject matter to be a bit grim and depressing. Our message is a bit more positive: Science is bloody awesome!
I was pretty nervous at first and thought the kids weren’t going to enjoy it and act as I did during my high school assemblies, which usually meant me sneaking out my gameboy and being grateful for the fact that I was out of class for an hour. Luckily, they seemed to enjoy the show and the atmosphere seemed more like a rock show than anything else.
The peak moment of my entertainment was when Mr. Wright, one of the masterminds behind the whole assembly, hopped into the Faraday-cage and busted out some wicked dance moves. And by wicked, I mean wicked for a high school science teacher. The response from the crowed sounded more as if Justin Timberlake had just sang one of his sexy songs, rather than a science teacher trying to get a chuckle from his students.
So here’s to you, Mr. Wright! Thank you for “bringin’ science back”, and thank you Claire Austin of McCallum High School for setting up this show!
Here at ArcAttack everyone is all about doing the impossible in your back yard or garage, and one thing that’s high on my list of projects is a scanning-tunnelling microscope. This atomic-resolution microscope was invented in the 80’s by IBM researchers and draws its image by shooting electrons into a sample at close range and recording the current. You can make your atomically sharp scanning tip for it with a pair of wire-cutters!
Beside that, it’s on Geocities, which I’m positive was supposed to be shut down last year, but this project is so awesome that they apparently let it stay!
ArcAttack is proud to announce an upcoming project sponsored by FUEL:pdx on fire, to design and build a very large, and very experimental solid state Tesla coil system for display at their exhibition in September.
The best part about this deal, they are letting us keep the equip ment when the show is over!
Fuel has been a pleasure to work with thus far, and we very much appreciate the trust they have in us, to design this new and experimental system.
Check back with us for more updates on this project!
Many thanks to all those that came to Art Outside this year! It was a spectacular venue with plenty of space and many wonderful things to see. We saw lots of familiar faces and got to meet some new ones as well. There were art installations from all over the country as well as three stages for musical acts, a clothing swap, and hanging art galleries. There was plenty of camping space and even sausage on a stick!
We were very happy to utilize our new Faraday cage for the first time in Texas and many folks were Cleansed of their negative emotions and became New with us. Although our performances were curtailed due to the rain, we still managed to jam out some live music and feature some of our new songs.
If you missed us at Art Outside, fear not, we have another upcoming show right here in Austin!!!
Electricity!
Saturday October 17
Kenny Dorham’s Backyard
1106 East 11th St.
Austin, TX 78751
Wow, what a whirlwind of activity, these past two months! We at Arcattack are pleased to announce that we have touched ground once again back home in Austin and the tour was a smashing success! We did around 205 performances in the 56 days of our journey to Abu Dhabi and the Netherlands, shot lots of video footage, got some great audio (thanks Ivan!) and met many new friends. We also gained many new fans! It was really a pleasure to travel the world and see all those new faces. We hope that you all come on and join us on facebook http://www.facebook.com/arcattack or Myspace http://www.myspace.com/singingtesla
Summer in Abu Dhabi was a wonderful experience. It is hard to say exactly how many folks we entertained over the course of the festival, but it was well into the tens of thousands. We got out to see some of the sights, experienced the nightlife, and ate lots of great food (Hooray for Eat n Joy!). It is hard to sum up the whole of the experience in even a few short paragraphs. We have posted some pics of the journey on our Myspace page.
The Netherlands tour was better than we could have hoped for! We played for student introduction week at three Universities and got a great private tour of the Delft campus. We played several outdoor festivals, as well, including Cultura Nova, Dynamo, Zomerparkfeest, and Zomerterras (just to name a few) and there are some great Youtube vids up of some of the shows. We played for our biggest single crowd ever at Zomerparkfeest, where roughly 20k folks saw the show! Perhaps the best part, however, were the three days off we had in Amsterdam. It was nice to catch up on some sleep and do some sightseeing. Then it was back through the airport with all our gear and back to Austin for one day before hopping in the van to Dragon*Con!
Everybody has arrived safe and sound and we are rocking out here in Abu Dhabi! We have been nothing short of pleasantly surprised by pretty much every aspect of both the country and the venue. Our first surprise was the stage itself. We were greeted by a wondrous neon sign declaring that we are Arcattack in three foot high red letters limned with Tesla sparks.
The crowds here are quite a bit more reserved than we are used to, but it was explained to us that this is simply a cultural difference. All the reports that we have had from the organizers (Red Filo) is that people like the show, so that is encouraging. Our technical support crew is top notch and we are busy recording both audio and video files in hopes of producing a “Live at Summer in Abu Dhabi” DVD in order to share with you our experiences here.
During the time between our shows we are busy hammering out some new material as well as building robots and making friends with support staff. We are also incorporating some new coding into our old songs in order to “liven” up our current material. We performed for the Sheikh of Travel and Tourism and the report we received was that he liked the show!
The third day of performances here we were supplied with a translator. This has helped us enormously bridge the gap between languages and culture and has significantly improved audience response. We are very much enjoying our visit here in the middle East; it has been an eye-opening experience!
Summer is almost upon us and Arcattack is heating it up around the world! We are pleased to announce the first appearances of the summer season.
First, we will be performing Thursday June 18th in New York City for The Most Interesting Man in the World! Dos Equis has invited us out to the Big Apple to entertain as only Arcattack can.
Second, we will be at MetroCon! June 19th – 21st with our main performance Saturday night. We are very excited about this show.
Third, and perhaps the most interesting of our summer stops; Arcattack is heading to Abu Dhabi! We will be engaged in a mission of education and entertainment in perhaps the most technologically advanced infrastructure on the planet. Arcattack will be performing two to three times daily, an educational set on the background, development, and use of our musical Tesla coils. We will be engaged there from July 1st through August 16th!
Then Arcattack flies into Amsterdam to kick off a whirlwind European tour! We will be hosting various dates and locations in the Netherlands and who knows where else?! Keep track on our Myspace page for listings of shows in Europe. We will be returning to the US around the 1st of September, just in time for our final stop in our whirlwind summer tour.
Dragoncon!!!
Arcattack will be performing once again for the Mad Scientist Ball!
We at Arcattack are really excited about the opportunities upcoming in the next few months. But, before we get into what the future holds, let’s wrap up a few gigs we have done recently.
Our Texas Burning Man Regional event was a wonderful success! The guys came together and did an improv performance on Saturday night that electrified the evening and the coils produced some of the most powerful sparks we have seen. The rain kept temperatures cool, but since we were prepared (as seasoned veterans are), the show went off without a hitch. See some awesome photos on Flikr.
The VEX Robotics World Championships (Dallas) afterparty turned out to be one of our favorite audience interactions to-date! The questions we fielded during our technical discussion from the crowd were some of the most technologically savvy queries we have received so far. Congratulations to all that participated in the Championships! Special thanks to Anton Olsen of Geek Dad for making it happen and to Jason Morrella of VEX Robotics for putting it together. We are already plotting some spectacularly electrifying entertainment for next year!
It has been a wonderful Spring, but its still not over! Arcattack has a couple of performances left this month before we get into July.
http://metroconventions.com/ has inspired Arcattack to reach beyond our norm and to create an entirely new stage show. Not only will we be featuring the songs you know and love, but we will be incorporating performance art in telling a tale of love and woe. Metrocon takes place in Tampa Florida June 19-21st and is Florida’s largest Anime convention. Many thanks to Roy and Shadowfax for giving us the opportunity and inspiration to keep raising the bar!
