Jason Barnes was 22 when an electric shock changed his life.
He was cleaning an exhaust duct at a restaurant near Atlanta when a transformer failed and 22.000 volts coursed through the right side of his body.
He was standing in water, wearing rubber boots. After several surgeries to try to save his arm, doctors had to amputate it below the elbow. He left the hospital deeply depressed. His dream of becoming a drummer seemed to have ended there.
But a few months later, he took his drum kit out of the garage and strapped a drumstick to his bandages. It hurt a lot. Even so, he kept the beat. Later, he managed to get into a music school and, together with Professor Gil Weinberg and his team at Georgia Tech, developed a robotic prosthesis: one drumstick responds to his muscles, while the other listens to the music and gets to improvise.
In 2014, he set a Guinness World Record for speed using prosthetics, and today he runs a foundation to help other musicians with disabilities access these technologies.
