Mellotronists

Get your dork on
Grownups who like to play with electricity get a charge out of showing off their projects at Dorkbot Austin.
By Sarah Frank

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Larry Kolvoord
AMERICAN-STATESMAN

(enlarge photo)
Craig Newswanger fires up his homemade Tesla coil at Zebra Imaging. The optical engineer drew cheers when he demonstrated its lightning-generating capabilities for those gathered at the Dorkbot Austin meeting one night in June.

Thao Nguyen
AMERICAN-STATESMAN

(enlarge photo)
Phil MacNutt's demonstration at the June Dorkbot Austin meeting showcased his theremin, an electronic musical instrument he housed in a gutted 1984 Macintosh and hooked up to a Moog synthesizer. Invented in 1919, the theremin changes its pitch when the player waves his hands around its antennae. If you've ever seen 'The Day the Earth Stood Still,' you've heard a theremin.

It was the first meeting of Dorkbot Austin, a laid-back get-together of, as the slogan says, "people doing strange things with electricity."

Strange it was, as far as parking lot gatherings go: It's not exactly commonplace to watch a man fire off homemade lightning bolts a few feet from someone's brand-new sport-utility vehicle. On the other hand, it's safer than inside the café.

At Dorkbot, anything's possible if it's electric.

Now appearing in cities across the globe, Dorkbot has grown from a once-in-a-while New York City meet-up five years ago to an international web of people — engineers, students, designers, scientists, artists — experimenting with electricity creatively.

Austin organizer Rodney Gibbs describes it as an informal salon for people who like to tinker in technology and circuitry.

"It's kind of like a geek talent show," says Gibbs, a studio director at video game development company Amaze Entertainment Inc., who, along with three friends, sets up Dorkbot Austin events. "A lot of people have these labors of love and these little projects they do on the side. Here they can bring them out in public and find kindred souls and collaborators."

Dorkbot will hold its second meeting at 8 p.m. Thursday at Cafe Mundi, 1704 E. Fifth St.

The meetings operate in a show-and-tell sort of format, with three local presenters given about 20 minutes each to fascinate fellow dorks (hey, it's a term of endearment in some circles). Afterward, audience members can take the microphone for two minutes and chat about something they're working on during the "open dork."

While listening to a local DJ spin records at the first Dorkbot Austin, a crowd sat on pavement, surfed wireless Internet and pulled out their digital cameras, eagerly awaiting the evening's presenters.

First in the spotlight (er, moonlight) was Phil MacNutt, who connected his Moog synthesizer to a gutted 1984 Macintosh computer that now houses a theremin, a musical instrument that can be played without even touching it. Merely waving a hand near the theremin's antennae changes the pitch of the tone.

The "music" sounded more like an ambulance siren than something to jam to, but even so, it elicited "Oohs" and "Ahhs" from onlooking audiophiles.

When MacNutt admitted that explaining the mechanics of a theremin (invented in 1919 by Russian Léon Thérémin) was beyond his brainpower, he charmingly asked, "Are there any electrical engineers in the house?"

Of course, there were.

One raised his hand, stepped up to the microphone and tried his best to explain the theremin in layman's terms. It's based on the principle of capacitance, he said, which has to do with the ability of a circuit or other device to store an electric charge.

Someone else decided to use a laptop and just Google it, reading off a Wikipedia entry about capacitance to the crowd.

Touché.

Another presenter, Craig Newswanger, shocked the Dorkbot crowd when he showed off his homemade lightning-bolt maker — known more scientifically as a Tesla coil.

The device is as big as a person, made with a transformer and aluminum dryer tubing, and can shoot arms-length lightning bolts into the air.

Newswanger, an optical engineer by day and high-voltage enthusiast by night, has been working on Tesla coils ever since he saw one at a museum as a child.

Sure, Nikola Tesla, the man who invented the Tesla coil in the late 19th century, had grander plans for his work, but nowadays Tesla coils are not much more than science hobbies and crowd-pleasers.

Standing in the darkness, Newswanger fired up the Tesla coil for a temporarily silent Dorkbot crowd. With a dim hum and a staticky smack the coil warmed up, launching the first of dozens of bright purpley-white sparks into the sky. The higher the bolts, the louder the cheers.

As a simple "do not try this at home" kind of warning, Newswanger roped off the area with red danger tape. He said that sometimes, people want to touch the Tesla coil, thinking they can make their hair go all Albert Einstein-y.

"This will make your hair stand up, but only for a second," he joked, conjuring images of a very undorklike death.

For presenters, Dorkbot can serve several purposes. For MacNutt and Newswanger, it's about fun: showing off their interpretation of machines invented long ago.

For others, it's a way to go public about an invention or innovation and get people talking, or maybe even find like-minded collaborators.

Animator Bob Sabiston, who worked on Richard Linklater's "Waking Life" and "A Scanner Darkly," used Dorkbot Austin to allow people to play with a paint and animation program he created for the handheld Nintendo DS system. It was the first time he'd shown the software in public.

"I'm pitching it to Nintendo to see if they're interested," he said. "If not, it'll just stay a hobby."

Children in the crowd tested out the software and told Sabiston that if Nintendo sells it, they'll buy it.

As for future Dorkbots, organizer Gibbs says he's optimistic. The New York City chapter now draws crowds into the hundreds at art galleries, and, Gibbs says, one day Austin could, too.

"People like bizarre, smart things here," Gibbs said, making a convincing argument that the Austin "open dorks" will continue. "It would certainly be keeping technology weird."

sfrank@...; 912-2933

Calling all dorks

Dorkbot Austin will hold its second meeting at 8 p.m. Thursday at Cafe Mundi, 1704 E. Fifth St. The free event will feature three local presenters. Audience members also can get a short speaking spot during the 'open dork' session at the end of the meeting. To sign up to be a presenter at a future Dorkbot meeting, e-mail dorkbotaustin