A great testing of parental patience occurs when children tear apart their toys-leaving them malfunctioning and useless-just to see what's going on inside. The Bent Festival celebrates the joy of taking one's toys apart-and through the art of circuit bending-invents a whole new gadget.
Toys are dismantled in circuit bending in order to create sounds not originally featured on the device. New sounds are achieved when two circuit locations are connected by wires and soldered to keep the "bend" intact.
Circuit bending has been around since the seventies, but the Bent Festival is relatively new-especially to Minneapolis-which hosted the event for the first time this year from April 19 to 21 at Intermedia Arts.
The Bent Festival is an event that brings all walks of circuit bending life together-from curious children and parents to electronic musicians and aficionados of the craft.
Mike Rosenthal, managing director of NYC gallery the Tank, founded the festival. In its fourth year, Bent left its home base of New York City to include dates in Minneapolis and Los Angeles.
Akin to events featured in the other cities, Minneapolis' Bent included performances by electronic musicians on each of the festival's three nights. Visual art focused on circuit bending was also on exhibit.
A series of five workshops held on day three of the festival ranged from beginner- to advanced-level circuit bending tutorials, drum machine modifications, parallel port constructions, and other tools used by advanced benders.
Intermedia's auditorium was home to all of the festival's workshops. The room was a mess of toys-Speak and Spells, Furbys, purple Teletubbies, toy guitars- accompanied by keyboards, batteries, and wire.
Despite the disorder, all the attendees at Bent had one common goal-to make sense of the chaos. On this particular Saturday morning at Intermedia, man's sole mission was to triumph over machine.
Circuit bending enthusiasts came from everywhere, including Austin Cliffe, who drove six hours from DeKalb, Illinois for the event. Cliffe has circuit bended for two years, and enjoys most the experimental nature of the activity. "It's an adventure to see what kind of instrument you'll come up with."
The Speak & Spell is the most frequently used toy. It is also the easiest to bend. Logan Erickson, a member of local band BitrChip, offered his explanation of why "Speaks" are so widely used among circuit benders.
"The Speak is the best bang for your buck. It has so many bends available, and in reality, the speech synthesizer chips just sound awesome!" Erickson co-hosted the advanced bending workshop with artist/musician Tim Kaiser.
The workshop focused on two concepts-setting a theory to the experimental process of circuit bending, and making similar instruments out of found objects. The tutorial resembled an infomercial selling multi-tasking kitchen gadgets, stressing the amount of money people could save in building their own instruments. For instance, a toy purchased for 69 cents at a thrift store could end up making the same sound as a Roland keyboard costing $600.
Toward the end of the theory-enriched lecture, Erickson reassured the audience that having fun with circuit bending is still key. "We're not snobs, if you have plastic farm animals sticking out of your instrument, that's way cool."
The workshops progressed in difficulty like a video game-from novice to master. In the final round, a workshop leader actually called the "Circuit Master" showed advanced benders how to use a parallel port to unite bent objects with computer.
Members of Beatrix Jar-who led the beginner' s workshop and performed the previous night, as well as Mystery Palace-who performed that night, sat down during the Circuit Master's lecture to take notes.
After a lengthy explanation of the complicated process, the Circuit Master plighted the parallel port's capabilities in circuit bending. "Really, there's no stopping us at this point," he said. "These toys can be triggered at incredible rates to make machine gun sounds."
The Bent Festival, however, stopped that night-for another year, at least.
Circuit bending workshops are still hosted around Minneapolis, by bands like Beatrix Jar, who offer lessons for beginners. "It's a way to spread the word about circuit bending and build a larger audience for our music and the sounds that other benders make," the band said. "It's time to start listening to something new." |
