This is how my 2011 performance for AGT was developed from a backyard Tesla coil demo.
The various TV and other videos are on the Australia’s Got Talent – Videos page.
But here is a 7 second animation of the 2 minute act which I will refer to.

The main stunts I did are these:

Left photo shows me holding a wooden rod with burning CD’s.  The wooden rod that I am holding goes up in flames. Extra sparkles came from burning steel wool. The right photo shows one of the promotional photos with sparks onto a metal cage that surrounds me .

So how did this all happen?

I was invited to perform in the auditions of Australia’s Got Talent in Perth, Western Australia which screened on May 10th Channel 7.
Suzanne (exec. producer) and Paul came to do some preliminary video at my place on November 24, 2010. Auditions were performed in Bunbury Western Australia of 200 people in the local Entertainment Centre and they came to my place afterwards. I was looked up specifically due to the top 5 success of “Arc Attack” in theAmerican equivalent show. This was the first level audition to see if it gets to the full auditions held in Perth in 2011. See the official AGT site.
The result was that I made it to the televised heats in March 20th in the Perth Entertainment and Convention Center. There were major issues with the venue, power, earthing, interference prevention and public liability.

Firstly the music. An original soundtrack was done by my son, Michael Terren who is an 18yo pianist and composer studying at the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts. The music has a pounding industrial theme and runs for 2:17 mins.

Resonant Air-Core Transformer (Australia’s Got Talent) by Michael Terren Some of his other work is here.
Secondly, crowd protection and iterference reduction in close proximity to judges, microphones and video cameras was achieved by the use of fine wire screens.

The judge screen is shown above. At 3.5m from TC center, there are strong sparks to the screen but I am quite safe behind them. For the judges (Kyle Sandilands, Dannii Minogue and Brian McFadden) I have chosen a more conservative distance of the screen being 5m away as shown on the right.
Much other equipment was constructed for this show including a bank of 6 arc welders to be used as needed for voltage isolation or ballast, and two 3 phase distribution boxes. Also extended black backdrops and a vast foil earthing system / partial Faraday cage not to mention a new capacitor bank and power factor correction.

 Above left shows the generator, capacitor bank and TC controller getting packed. Center shows the enormous pavilion and my fenced off area. They removed the carpet so they could drive trucks in. Right shows my team of (L to R) Michael, my son who did the music, Chris (son), Jane (wife), Jaime (Chris’s g/f) and me.

Above left is the repositioned enclosure and center shows one of many discussions with the safety officer, Joshua. The right photo is the final setup ready to go. Note there is a network of suspended wires completely circling the TC for protection and reduced fields for camera safety. On the day I decided not to go with the rigging of an elevated shield in view of the height of the roof. Note the large foil covered area of about 50 feet which is the RF earth which connects to all the elevated wires and frames. There was no direct link to the pavilion building earth but there may have been through some expansion joint covers. The mains earth was kept separate. I ran the ARSG gap and blower gap motors through back to back arc welders as isolation transformers. There was no clear return path for capacitative currents induced into the 50 foot ceiling. There was no ground available for over 100 m that was not a mains ground. Using this method of a “Faraday cage” open at the top, there was no evidence for interference with sound or cabled video cameras. It was close enough to have sparks within perhaps 10 feet of the judges (it could have safely been a lot closer with my design – tested to within 2 feet). The grounding with downwires from the frame allowed confidence in preventing capacitative voltages appearing on equipment and operators. It is my belief that this is more important than RF interference. Certainly this was as close as my operators have been and no tickle from holding the variac!