I'm much more excited about live-coding environments that foster new structural forms, like Extempore and its siblings, over Tesla coils and triggering techniques that are much, much more in line with traditional innovations.<p>Machover's Biomuse is over 20 years old and dot-matrix Star Wars is at least 10, and I don't really see those progressing beyond gimmickry, or at the high end engendering loop-pedal and sample-trigger (MPC, et al) artists that tend to hew to standard forms. Sadly, the heretofore promises of computer environments such as MAX/pure-data and even Ableton (when stretched) have caught their more experimental practitioners in a vortex of randomness, likewise let's-see-where-this-goes algo composers under compiled environments like SuperCollider. I'm all for the death of the author, but the book still needs to be legible.<p>Of course, all of this speaks only to my own preferences. None of us can predict the future.<p>Suffice it to say that I think the most meaningful musical statements tread a line between tool-exercise (because-I-can sound generation) and songwriting, and playing AC/DC with a Tesla coil really doesn't say much in that context. Now, treat a Van De Graaf generator like headphones so that the person touching it can experience the sensations of static electricity as a component of music, as a frequency-oriented tactile instrument, and I might start turning my ears (and hair) toward the welder-tunes crowd.