BUCKFIELD — Forget the fizz and falling sticky notes. Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz, the lab-coated duo known as Eepybird, began a demonstration of their newest experiment Monday by pulling the trigger on a lighter.

A row of flames rose along one side of a 2-foot-long metal tube. A moment later, the finger-sized flames began to dance.

“We are playing with fire,” Grobe said.

One end of the cylinder — known by science geeks as a “Ruben’s Tube” — fed the flames with propane. On the other end sat a latex membrane. An inch away, a small speaker faced the drum-like membrane. Instrumental music flowing from the speaker rippled through the fire with the beat of the base line.

“We’re going to see how far we can take it,” Grobe said.

Their full experiment will be unveiled on Friday night, when the pair will show off bigger tubes and live musicians in a choreographed, three-minute performance.

“We’re going to have live music and live fire,” Voltz said.

Tickets to the free show are all gone. Reservations for all 300 seats were scooped up by people who called Buckfield’s Oddfellow Theater during the last week.

And though lots of cameras will document the performance, it’s uncertain when it may be seen by a wider public.

The live experiment is supposed to be the finale to a TV pilot that was shot over the last few days in Buckfield, where a cable TV network has been filming Grobe and Voltz in documentary style.

A spokeswoman from the show declined to release which network is following the duo.

However, Grobe and Voltz hope to find out by the end of the year if the network plans to buy the show and make them TV stars.

It would be familiar ground. They’ve been featured on many TV shows since their first Internet video — capturing their Diet Coke and Mentos experiment — became a viral hit. Since then, they unveiled a second act, creating waterfalls from sticky notes, and become repeat winners of the Internet’s Webby Awards. Their work has been seen more than 100 million times on TV and online. The pair has performed for crowds sometimes surpassing 10,000 people and have been featured in music videos by the bands Barenaked Ladies and Weezer.

They hope the TV show will give them further license to experiment with everyday objects.

“This is all stuff that maybe people have around the house,” Voltz said about this experiments’ props, including more metal tubes and 100 canisters of propane.

“We kind of bought out Lowell’s,” Voltz said.

The idea for the Ruben’s Tube came from Eepybird’s birthplace, the Internet. As with the Diet Coke and Mentos experiment, other people had come up with the initial idea. The tubes are demonstrated in physics classes the way a Tesla coil is sometimes demonstrated. But while the coil’s manufactured lightning is a mainstay of scary old movies, few people had given Ruben’s tubes the showbiz treatment.

“No one’s really explored it,” Voltz said.

He and Grobe have. In recent weeks, they have been working with Oren Robinson, who leads the house band at the Oddfellow Theater’s Early Evening Show, to explore the way sounds and particular instruments effect their bouquets of gas-powered fire. 

Robinson has gathered a special group of musicians to best exploit the fire for Friday’s audience, Grobe said.

Attendees to the experiment are asked to pick up signs at the center of town. From there, they’ll be led to a farm on the North Buckfield Road and a tent erected for the occasion. Reservation holders are asked to dress warm for a cool evening and arrive between 6:30 p.m. and 7:15 p.m. for the taping, which is scheduled to last less than an hour and go forward rain or shine.

Voltz and Grobe promise that the audience will be safe despite the flames, none of which will surge taller than 6 inches.

“We’ve spent weeks working on the safety of this, just to make sure that every angle is considered,” Grobe said. “No smoking. Absolutely.”

dhartill@sunjournal.com

Stephen Voltz, left, and Fritz Grobe of Diet-Coke-and-Mentos fame demonstrate their latest stunt in Buckfield involving flames that respond to sound waves generated by music using propane gas and a piece of metal pipe.

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