Philip Stearns, the artist behind the eye-catching installation Entity 1, has shared a collection of photos from Bent! Check out his flickr page!

Our good friend Matt Musick from Motherboard.tv sent over a couple of short video clips from Bent Festival!


Entity 1 by Philip Stearns. An installation at Bent Festival 2010 in DUMBO, Brooklyn, NY.


Dr. Rek's Performance


Bodytronix

Thanks to every single one of our supporters, donors, artists and staff for making the 7th annual Bent Festival a memorable one!

If you have photos or video from Bent, we'd like to post it ! Please email jenn@thetanknyc.org with any links and we will happily credit you!

Saturday April 24, doors at 7:30pm - Evening Performances
Tickets are $10 at the door

Ongoing Installations by Brendan O'Connell, Joe Mariglio + Steven Litt, Paulo R. C. Barros, Philip Stearns, Philip White, Daniel Temkin, James C. Daher, Gabriel Barcia-Columbo, & Don Miller

8:00PM KBD
8:30PM Travis Thatcher
9:00PM Playboy's Bend
9:30PM ::vtol::
10:00PM Dr. Rek
10:30PM Bodytronix

Saturday April 24 (Saturday night), 12:00am - Bent Festival Afterparty
Tickets are $10 at the door

Motherboard.tv presents The Bent Festival afterparty featuring performances by Computer at Sea, Ken Rei , DJ sets by Dr Rek and visuals by Sam Muglia. Open bar until 12:30am and free Colt 45 all night while it lasts. Admission subject to capacity. Stay tuned to the blog at bentfestival.org and @bentfestival twitter for opportunities to win VIP passes!

12:00PM || Travis Thatcher : Voice of Saturn || Tickets ($50)
4 hours. Max enrollment 13.

This workshop is geared towards beginners - intermediate kitbuilders. We will provide participants with a barebones Voice of Saturn synth kit, as well as a small protoboard with some components for demonstrating some very basic and useful circuits. The first part of the workshop will consist of going over these circuits and how to quickly implement them and use them in the process of circuit bending (LFO, mixer, adding simple voltage control). Then participants will be able to construct their VoS synth kits. The kits will be provided without cases to keep costs down, but participants are encourage to bring their own enclousures. More information on the Voice of Saturn: http://curiousinventor.com/kits/voice_of_saturn

12:00PM || Motherboard.tv presents Peter Edwards aka casperelectronics : Beginning Circuit Bending - All Ages! || 3 hours. Free and open to the general public. Got a cool new SK1 mod to show off? Never held a soldering iron before? Come on down! Tools, materials, and instruction will be available for free. Professional circuit bender and circuit bending teacher Peter Edwards of casperelectronics will be covering bending basics and beyond. Bring toys to bend, bring a work in progress, just come and watch. Open to all ages and all experience levels. All are welcome to attend the intro to bending workshop, but you must bring your own toy to bend. We will provide soldering irons and hardware but will NOT be supplying toys. Anything that is battery powered and makes sound is fair game! Keep it cheap. Don't buy new, expensive toys from toy stores. They might not bend and you might break them. Search thrift stores and tag sales. Try to bring at least two devices to work on. If you have any questions about what to bring or not bring, don't hesitate to contact the instructor at pete@casperelectronics.com

Motherboard.tv is a proud supporter of DIY breaking and making in music and technology. Watch Sound Builders, a new documentary series on hacking and creating musical instruments. Then submit your own homebrewed ideas to the Sound Builders contest. The grand prize winner will be profiled in an upcoming Sound Builders episode -- and takes home $1000

4:00PM || Phillip Stearns : Analog is not dead! // Operational Amplifiers: Oscillators, Filters, and Feedback Machines || Tickets ($45)
4 hours. Max enrollment 10.

Though digital electronics dominate the music production scene, and have been employed to augment and extend just about every acoustic instrument imaginable--- from the cello to the tabla---ANALOG IS NOT DEAD! From oscillators and filters to authentic distortion, gritty delays, and fluid phasing, analog electronics are very much alive in the realm of effects and synthesis. A handful of simple components, concepts and skills will enable you to build your own custom analog instruments and effects. In the workshop, you will learn about transistors, operational amplifiers, and how to combine them with various networks of diodes, resistors and capacitors to form simple mixers, distortion effects, filters and touch controlled feedback machines! This hands on workshop will review the theory behind all of the components involved. It is centered around the application of knowledge through the construction and expansion of simple operational amplifier circuits. We will learn the concepts and the skills necessary to continue exploring the possibility of creating with analog electronics with applications in music, sound art, and interactive new media art. No soldering necessary. Beginners welcome but it would be helpful to review the basics (voltage, current, DC circuits, AC circuits, etc.).

4:00PM || Handmade Music Austin : The Best of Texan Synthesis || Tickets ($65) / Build all three for $65

SimSam 2 from 4ms Pedals || 4:00PM - 5:00PM || $25
The SimSam (Simple Sampler) is a glitchy sample-rate cruncher, hacking an AVR chip to demonstrate a cheap wavetable sampler/playback. It's both a weird pitch shifting effect with an input and output jack, as well as a feedback-looped noise-maker instrument in its own right. SimSam info, schematic, code, etc: http://4ms.org/projects/?p=77

Photo: http://www.4mspedals.com/other/simsam28.jpg
Video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OjS7QCntCw

PicoPaso from Bleep Labs || 5:00PM - 6:00PM || $25
The PicoPaso is a dual triangle wave stepped tone generator controlled by photocells. It features a square wave LFO and shape control triangle oscillators. More info and videos at bleeplabs.com

Mini Space Rockers from eric archer || 6:00PM - 7:00PM || $25
This four-transistor pushbutton percussion synthesizer is minimal and versatile. There are 3 capacitors that define the circuit's frequency, pitch envelope, and decay time. Workshop participants choose one of 25 'flavors' for their Mini Space Rocker, with names like Pak-Man (hi pitched gobbling of dots), Gabbabass (grimy acid bass drop), and Space Hawk (cosmic sound of lazer bird descending on victim). Schematic, partslist, and perfboard layout can be viewed at the Mini Space Rockers URL.

Mini Space Rockers URL: http://ericarcher.net/devices/mini-space-rockers
Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alh84001/4471747572/
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w6Yx0W3NmY

7:00PM || Todd Bailey : Analog Video Synthesis and Bending || 1 hour. Free and open to the general public.

For the artsy-fartsy electronics enthusiast attempting to get into video circuits, the world can be a confusing place. All the familiar circuits useful for generating audio or other lower frequency pursuits become clunky and slow. Timing specs become exacting. And what's worse, now that the age of analog video has come and gone, widely available chips for specific video functions are becoming rare and extinct. The solution? Homework, of course! The challenge when messing with video is to get something that looks cool without making a signal your receiver rejects because it can no longer recognize it as video. Video signals, while relatively complicated, do in fact make sense if you break them down to their component parts. With a little knowledge of how a video signal is put together, you can be better prepared to make it do weird stuff!

This lecture will familiarize you with the following concepts in analog video:
Raster Scanning, Interlacing, Horizontal and Vertical Sync, Colorbursts and Color Information Encoding, 75-ohm termination, Phase Locking, Standard signal levels, VGA vs Composite Video, S-Video, etc etc. Moreover, you will learn what you can mess with and what you can't in a signal, and when you can fudge it. Finally, in the spirit of hands-on education, I'll be selling a limited edition of kits which allow the user to break analog video into its components, bend the good parts, and leave the tricky parts alone. The kits are optional and not required for the lecture, which is free.

Bent Festival 2010 - Friday April 23

Single Day Tickets are $10
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/102198

Ongoing Installations by Brendan O'Connell, Joe Mariglio + Steven Litt, Paulo R. C. Barros, Philip Stearns, Philip White, Daniel Temkin, James C. Daher, Gabriel Barcia-Columbo, & Don Miller

Friday Workshops
12:00PM || Derek Holzer : TONEWHEELS|| Tickets ($40)
6 hours and evening performance. Max enrollment 10
TONEWHEELS is an experiment in converting graphical imagery to sound, inspired by some of the pioneering 20th Century electronic music inventions such as the ANS Synthesizer (Murzin USSR 1937-57), the Variophone (Sholpo USSR 1930) and the Oramics system (Oram UK 1957). Transparent tonewheels with repeating patterns are spun over light-sensitive electronic circuitry to produce sound and light pulsations and textures. In this 1 day workshop, participants will learn to construct two different circuits: a simple light-to-sound converter and a variable motor speed controller, as well as how to design and print their own tonewheel patterns using the FLOSS software Inkscape. The workshop concludes with a group performance and an invitation to the audience to experiment with the instruments which have been created.

12:00PM || Peter Edwards aka casperelectronics : The Benjolin || 6 hours. Max enrollment 10
In this one-day workshop, headed by circuit bender Peter Edwards of casperelectronics, participants will build the Benjolin, designed by synth engineering genius Rob Hordijk. The Benjolin is a wildly clever, boundry pushing analog sound-device that is very different from what you will find from other DIY-kits.

Workshop fee: $150 this includes all parts and tools. If you have tools you would like to bring, you are encouraged to do so. We will do our absolute best to ensure that every one leaves with a working unit. For reservations, please contact Brendan Byrne at brendan@thetanknyc.org

Friday Performances
Doors at 7:30pm, free beer until 8pm!

8:00PM Derek Holzer
8:30PM Peter Edwards aka casperelectronics
9:00PM Burnkit 2600
9:30PM The Tronic
10:00PM LÖWENZAHN
10:30PM Gannon
11:00PM LCDD
11:30PM Alpha-Bit

Group Name: Alpha-Bit || Real name: Chris Kaczmarek || Location: Lower Hudson and NYC



Bent: Before you got into circuit bending, what type of music or art where you into?
Well, Alpha-Bit is a group of artists who actually come from a number of different backgrounds. The incredible diversity of the group is one of the really special things about Alpha-Bit. I really love that we have an intergenerational span with members who range from those in their forties to those in their twenties. Within the group we have an incredible assortment of experience and interests; I don’t even think I could list them all. We have two students who are working on undergraduate degrees who have a real active interest in performance art, music and technology. One of our members is a gallery director, professor and an expert on fourteenth century painting techniques. One guy is an art historian, museum preparator and has worked as a professional musician, another is 3-D animator; another owns a faux finishing business and is an incredible keyboardist and drummer. It really is an amazingly diverse group. All of these experiences feed our approach to our performance, and while we are all interested in audio experimentation, circuit building and/or circuit bending it is just a part of our larger group interests, and both a continuation and augmentation of the different types of work that we have been doing before.

Bent: How did you get into circuit bending?
Personally I have always been interested in electronics, but I never really had the time or opportunity to explore it. I had a great teacher in middle school many years ago who introduced me to simple DC circuits, but I have not really had any formal training since then. When I became aware of the DIY circuit scene and started to find books like Nicholas Collins’ Handmade Electronic Music it made me take a second look. I got really interested and felt that unlike the “magic boxes” that are filled with circuits all around us, I could actually understand this. So I bought a soldering iron, a breadboard and a multi-meter, and the rest is history.

Bent: Where do you find inspiration for your work?
Inspiration for my circuit based projects usually comes from two places, either from the circuits or the enclosures. Sometimes I find a box or something that is just begging to be an enclosure for a project. When that happens I hold on to it and work on what kind of circuit would fit best in it. Sometimes I learn about a new circuit that I know I want to make and I just keep hunting till I find the perfect enclosure for it. Once I have the two components together I am inspired to finish the project, but the inspiration to start a project can come from either end. I had an Erector Set case from when I was very young that was made out of this yellow plastic, I had held on to it forever with the knowledge that it would be perfect for something. Literally 25 years later I started working with the 74C14 using photo resistors, I put that circuit into the erector set box with a strobe light and now I have this wonderful rhythmic oscillator that is modulated by a flashing strobe. It makes the yellow plastic box just blaze with this fantastic light when it is on. This was a perfect blend of circuit and enclosure, inspired by both.

Bent: What is your take on the bending community at large? Where are you in it?
I am a real advocate for the bending community. I think that encouraging people to take an active role in understanding and manipulating the electronic things that surround us is definitely a positive thing. As our world becomes more saturated with media that is delivered to us by these increasingly pervasive and intelligent devices we as a society are really losing touch with the idea that these things are tools. They become so powerful and magical; they become fetish objects that begin to have more control over us that we have over them. To break open the guts of an electronic appliance and be able to identify what is a resistor or is a capacitor, and to be able to manipulate that object to your will gives the individual a certain amount of agency over the electronic world. It is important for us as humans and citizens to know that we are not the slaves to the tools we use. So I guess where I really fit into the community is as an advocate. I teach an Aural Electronics class at a local college and I do my best to try and help spread the word about circuit building and audio experimentation. I am really looking forward to perhaps moving into greater community involvement through performances or demonstrations at events like Bent Fest, where the ideas and experiences of circuit building can be shared with a larger audience outside of academia.

Bent: Is there anything you want to accomplish while you are in New York?
I think I can speak for all the members of Alpha-Bit when I say that the main thing we want to accomplish here is to be a part of the best Bent Festival ever!

Bent: Who are you most excited to see at Bent? Why?
To be honest I don’t have a single artist or group that I am excited to see, there is such a great lineup that it would be impossible to choose just one. I am just excited to have the opportunity to see them all in one place and to be a part of the event this year. I am really looking forward to experiencing as many performances and meeting as many people as I can. :)

Artist Name: Macumbista || Real name: Derek Holzer || Location: Berlin, Germany



Bent: Before you got into electronics, what type of music or art where you into?
I've been involved in electronic, media and net art for the past 10 years, and although I make "electronic music", I don't listen to any contemporary dance or pop artists at all. A look through my record collection might turn up electro-acoustic composers from the 1960's, old African funk 45's from the 1970s, hair metal from the 1980's or hardcore from the 1990's, plus folk music from any number of East European, Middle Eastern or Asian cultures. Right now, some elements of the noise scene like Daniel Menche or Kevin Drumm remain pretty exciting, as well as more conceptual people like John Wiese or Florian Hecker. On the historical side, composers like Eliane Radigue, Maryanne Amacher, Iannis Xenakis, Bernard Parmegiani and David Tudor have been big inspirations to me. I also listen to shit-load of drone, doom, death and black metal. It's good to remind yourself that nothing is really ever new or original, you can find the roots of anything if you look deep enough into the past.

Bent: How did you get into electronics?
A long time ago, in a previous lifetime, I was studying writing in the university. Some things in my life changed dramatically as a result of my first stint living abroad, and when I returned to the States my new path was clear: doing sound, and in a place where there is genuine support for the arts (i.e. Europe)! Instead of completing my thesis, I attempted to build my first synthesizer from an SN76477 chip, probably liberated from a pinball machine somewhere. It was a failure, and I spent the next several years doing digital audio instead. I finally came back to electronics about four years ago, when I was so sick of laptop "performances" I couldn't stand it anymore, and soon after began the process of building my own modular synthesizer as well as designing the TONEWHEELS optoelectronic synthesizer.

Bent: Where do you find inspiration for your work?
The TONEWHEELS project was inspired by some of the pioneering 20th Century electronic music inventions, such as the ANS Synthesizer (Murzin USSR 1937-57), the Variophone (Sholpo USSR 1930) and the Oramics system (Oram UK 1957). With the help of Andrei Smirnov of the Theremin Center in Moscow, I did an incredible amount of research into the history of drawn sound and optical synthesis while I was designing the TONEWHEELS synthesizer. The experiments made with "painted soundtracks" in the Soviet Union during the 1930's in particular are mind-blowing, and without the work of Mr Smirnov they would be unknown to the rest of the world. I also spent several days at the Daphne Oram archives at Goldsmiths University in London, reading the letters between her and the engineer who helped her build the Oramics machine. It was fascinating! The same concerns she had, and the same learning process, were the hurdles I had to jump in my own work. You can see the results of my historical research here: http://www.umatic.nl/tonewheels_historical.html

Bent: What is your take on the circuit bending community at large? Where are you in it?
I'd have to say that I don't consider myself a "circuit bender" exactly. It's very rare that I take an existing consumer gadget and try to hack it. My approach tends to be to start with the most basic parts I can understand and work up from there. In the case of the TONEWHEELS project, that part is called a phototransistor, and my first experiment was simply to run 5 volts through it into a mixer channel and start flickering the lights in the room! This might be where I part company from Reed Ghazala's "antitheory" approach, which seems to be very popular among benders. For me, the possibilities come not from blindly sticking my fingers in things, but instead from understanding the materials I am working with and their specific properties. That said, I failed every math class I was ever forced to take and still maintain a rather intuitive relationship with those materials, which is hardly the way a "real" engineer might work! I’ve always maintained that the only thing that separates artists using technology now from the electronic art pioneers of the 1960s and 1970s--such as Steina & Woody Vasulka, Don Buchla, Serge Tcherepnin, Dan Sandin and David Tudor--is the internet. Whereas they had much more limited channels to find the information they needed, we have an almost limitless supply. Which is of course the other half of the problem–trying to get the signal out of the noise.

Bent: Is there anything you want to accomplish while you are in New York?
Finding a place to stay during the week I'm there is a good start!!!!! But seriously...I'm negotiating to do a field recording workshop at Harvestworks as well as a couple talks at the Electronic Music Foundation on the history of optoelectronic synthesis and a project related to sound and architecture I've been involved in called Tuned City. Besides that, I'm trying to look up the current locations of some of the old original audio and video synthesizers produced in the 1960's and 1970's, so I can see them up close. Every university I've been invited to speak at in the US and the UK all seem to have some analog treasure locked up in a closet somewhere!!!!

Bent: Who are you most excited to see at Bent? Why?
I'm quite excited to meet Eric Archer, from Austin Texas. I believe he is performing as Doctor Bleep. Eric and I have been writing for a year or two now, and his Light2Sound device is totally awesome, a really nice introduction to optical synthesis for beginners. Actually, I have a huge amount of respect for Eric and his creations--maybe because I have a suspicion he actually aced his math classes and actually had an idea what he would do with it later!

Artist Name: LCDD (Los Caballos De Düsseldorf or whatever fits with the acronym) || Real name: Olaf aka "burro acrata", Eva aka "yegua de dresden", Carmen aka "mulasaña", Murky aka "potro de cascorro" || Location: Madrid, Spain

Bent: Before you got into circuit bending, what type of music or art where you into?
punk, rock 'n'roll and twist

Bent: How did you get into circuit bending?
After a show of the Doorag duo (Tucson, Arizona) impacted by the weird sound effect from the drummer Thermos Malling, we tried to make the same with our band from the time, Las Solex. Little by little we started shaping the circuit and the plug-in and the plug-out. Then we quit guitars, bass and drums and kept on playing with bended "doorags"

Bent: Where do you find inspiration for your work?
beyond the limits where object turns into trash for one and opportunity for the other, same with sound.

Bent: What is your take on the bending community at large? Where are you in it?
so far when somebody call his bended instrument "doorag" we know they built it after our manual, workshops or advice. For the moment is frequent in Spain and we hope that soon will be the same over the ocean.

Bent: Is there anything you want to accomplish while you are in New York?
play everynight and learn new tricks to bring back home. Some museums are welcomed too; any advice?

Bent: Who are you most excited to see at Bent? Why?
any surprising and unknown act as "I did not know that could be done. I didn't know she could do that"

Artist Name: Casperelectronics || Real name: Peter Edwards || Location: Troy, NY

Bent: Before you got into circuit bending, what type of music or art where you into?
i was doing installation art/performance. Basically I'd build a room with lots of crazy stuff in it, then dress up as some....thing, hand out fliers and have an opening. art school stuff. Before I got into bending I did a lot of laborious sound wave sequencing computer music.

Bent: How did you get into circuit bending?
I got into analog synths and sound objects. I was broke and curious. I met someone making his own bent speak&Spells and it was the perfect fit.

Bent: Where do you find inspiration for your work?
The pieces themselves bring a lot of inspiration. I love seeing how some engineer designed the insides of the devices I bend. I also like seeing what emerges when I experiment with the circuit. This is has the most impact on what path I take with a piece.

Bent: What is your take on the bending community at large? Where are you in it?
I'm a lot more involved than I have been in the past. I've had casperelectronics.com online for around 10 years and have been posting schematics all along, so a lot of people email me with questions and are looking for advice on stuff. I like being connected to the community. I think it's grown a lot and that open source info sharing has gotten more popular all over the place. My take now is that I'm more psyched about the approach to engineering that bending has taught me than I am in straight up bending kids toys. It's a really empowering medium and the results on a communal level are a lot bigger than just making weird sounds. I like making weird sounds too, but I really like seeing artists get excited about electronics.

Bent: Is there anything you want to accomplish while you are in New York?
I'm really excited to head up Rob Hordijk's Benjolin building workshop. He's an amazing engineer and I'm glad to be able to help expose more people to his designs.

Bent: Who are you most excited to see at Bent? Why?
I'm really looking forward to meeting up with the Austin Handmade music crew. The electronics scene in Austin is pretty amazing. I bought a ticket for all of the kits from them.

Philip Stearns took amazing photos from the first night of Bent! See the rest on Philip's flickr album!
Action Potential:Interact by Torino:Margolis


Listening Piece for a Selfish Ensemble by Brendan O'Connell


Philip White


Entity 1 by Philip Stearns

Because of the volcanic ash surrounding parts of Europe, Threep was unable to make it to New York for their performance tonight. Instead, we screened their exclusive video performance last night. We've invited locals Burnkit 2600! Check out what we have in store for you tonight!

Bent Festival 2010 - Thursday April 22
Doors at 7:30pm, free beer until 8pm!

3 day Concert Passes for Thursday, Friday and Saturday (April 22 - 24) are available for $25
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/102194

Single Day Tickets for any night are $10
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/102198

Ongoing Installations by Brendan O'Connell, Joe Mariglio + Steven Litt, Paulo R. C. Barros, Philip Stearns, Philip White, Daniel Temkin, James C. Daher, Gabriel Barcia-Columbo, & Don Miller

Performances
8:00PM Philip White
8:30PM Action Potential:Interact
9:00PM homeless of the sea and sky
9:30PM Adachi Tomomi
10:00PM LOLFM
11:00PM Loud Objects



Tweet the festival ! Use the tag #bent10 to let us know what you think!

Artist: ::vtol:: || Real Name: Dmitry Morozov || Location: Moscow, Russia



Bent: Before you got into circuit bending, what type of music or art where you into?
Before playing music on diy machines I've played experimental music - a mix of electronic music, crazy guitar improvisations and some ambient. Since early 00's I started to collect synths and guitar pedals - every time i find that commercial stuff couldn't give me enough individuality. I started searching for something freaky and rare.

Bent: How did you get into circuit bending?
I got into the circuit bending when I was kid, despite the fact that I did't know what this process was called. I was always charmed with small electronic parts mounted inside devices ( many coloured cords etc). I started to draw the parts from broken devices and combine them chaotically. Once i made big computer just from broken telephones - of course it exploded with small fire in my room...

Bent: Where do you find inspiration for your work?
There is no problem with inspiration for circuit bending in Russia - the whole lifestyle of this country is circuit bending (you can see it everywhere). It is very typical for us to repair electronic devices instead of throw them out - so you can find very old electronic devices from 60-70-ss still involved. Our country is totally industrial - with many factories, defence plants and lost army objects. So starting from birth you can see it and it's in your blood. Of course Russia is not only Solder-State we have very rich culture history and many big names in art. I study art history at the university so the second inspiration block are russian painters and architects from early 20-30-ss years. And i forgot - youtube!!! i think everyone who is in circuit bending should check tube for news, demos and inspiration.

Bent: What is your take on the bending community at large? Where are you in it?
Circuit bending, diy instruments, installations and performances are my job and life at the moment. We have very small community fo CB in Russia, but many people are interested in my synths and other sound stuff. So that makes my work actually important, despite my need to learn more.

Bent: Is there anything you want to accomplish while you are in New York?
Well, I want to see and rub shoulders with many circuit-benders from other countries - most of them i saw only from my laptop screen and was very inspirited with them work and now i will meet them - cool!!!

Artist Name: Stefan Jankus || Location: Hamburg,Germany



Bent: Before you got into circuit bending, what type of music or art where you into?
I was always into any kind of visual art,vintage computer game Grafix,vintage electronic gear design

Bent: How did you get into circuit bending?
I used to work as an electronics engineer,fixing TV's,instruments and stuff like that before i started my career as an editor. I was always experimenting around with cameras feedbacks and stuff like that,before i started to build my own stuff or modify stuff for other people.

Bent: Where do you find inspiration for your work?
i often go through junkshops or yardsales,and when i see something interesting i think of what could be done with it,and of course other circuit benders!

Bent: Is there anything you want to accomplish while you are in New York?
I wanna eat at least one Burger a day!

Bent: Who are you most excited to see at Bent? Why?
Don't know guess i'm gonna see all of them!

Artist Name: Paulo R. C. Barros || Location:Sao Paulo, Brazil



Bent: Before you got into circuit bending, what type of music or art where you into?
My formal academic studies were in Communication and I always was up to date to any type of artistic manifestation. With the popularization of the personal computer a lot of people started to make art using this platform. I was one of them. I started creating experimental videos using a variety of techniques and programs. I also was making sonorous plastics and turntablism using samplers and some synths to use in my videos.

Bent: How did you get into circuit bending?
Searching for ways of producing sounds of new sources in the Internet. I bought the Reed Ghazala book and started making modifications on toy instruments. I realized that I had the total freedom to experiment new ways of sonorous expression, to record these sounds and to manipulate them in the computer. I am really glad that circuit bending is becoming more and more known and important to the musical world.

Bent: Where do you find inspiration for your work?
I think some of my inspiration comes from observation of what has been produced recently and also from Science Fiction (I am really a big fan of this genre). One of the reasons that I like so much circuit bending is the chance of getting infinite possibilities at each altered device. Bending alloys us to create new sounds without the need of advanced knowledge in music and electronics. The techniques and concepts that I use to make my video works are based on the minimalism principles, using the fragmentation and the intentional repetition of sonorous and visual signals, sometimes with hypnotic and pulsing results.

Bent: What is your take on the bending community at large? Where are you in it?
I am still studying and learning and I try to follow the Circuit Bending scene. Circuit bending is a wonderful source of learning, the creation of new sounds is fundamental to my video works.

Bent: Is there anything you want to accomplish while you are in New York?
That will be a great opportunity to know so much talented people personally and watch their work, that I know only virtually. I consider the Bent Festival the most traditional and important event of bending worldwide and I am deeply honored to be part of it.

Bent: Who are you most excited to see at Bent? Why?
As I am participating with an video installation, I would like to see the work of the other artists on this area. I am also very excited to see the workshops and the live presentations. The diversity of their work is the great treasure of the Bent Festival.

Artist Name: the 3 of spades (CrudSpades Ginormous Thing installation with Steven Litt) || Real name: Joe Mariglio || Location: Brooklyn, NY


Students from the Unsound Festival's Kid's Electronic Music Band, facilitated by Lori Napoleon, Ted Hayes (conducting), Karla Calderon, Steve Litt, Mike Clemow, and Joe Mariglio (mixing). For more information about the event, visit http://www.joemariglio.com/blog/?p=588

Bent: Before you got into circuit bending, what type of music or art where you into?
i had been into electronic music for a long time before i stumbled upon "no - input" mixing. i must have been one of thousands of people who believed they had found something completely new. before this, my main focus was free jazz. i had been classically trained from an early age, but once i became an angsty teen i decided to revolt against this training as hard as possible. i was already making noise oriented music on synths and computers by the time i figured out bending.

Bent: How did you get into circuit bending?
i'm pretty sure the first time i did it, it was an accident. my guess is many people had this experience, no? i thought i had broken my mixer. then, i actually broke it. it was fun.

Bent: Where do you find inspiration for your work?
i used to live in bushwick, right on top of the j-z train. it would go by every fifteen minutes or so and shake everything. at night the apartment would light up a little with the sparks from the track. it was like lightning on a timer. i really miss that train, although there are some great new trains where i am now.

Bent: What is your take on the bending community at large? Where are you in it?
i love it! i mean, to the extent that i know anything about it. really i only know my murky corner of the community, and i look forward to meeting more folks at this festival. so far, my experience has been really solid. people are so receptive and willing to share!

Bent: Is there anything you want to accomplish while you are in New York?
i want to participate, along with people of all ages and backgrounds, in a collaborative creative act without cultural precedent. or something.

Bent: Who are you most excited to see at Bent? Why?
Everyone! That's not a cop-out!

Artist Name: Torino:Margolis || Real name: Jenny Torino and Ben Margolis || Location: New York



Bent: Before you got into circuit bending, what type of music or art were you into?
Traditional bare bones performance art and the body in-extremis movement. For example, artists like Stelarc, Chris Burden, Karen Finley, Fluxus, Ulay and Marina Abramovic and Vito Acconci.

Bent: How did you get into circuit bending?
We started experimenting with the body's inherent electrical signals and using them to make sound.

Bent: Where do you find inspiration for your work?
How the body works and the people of various disciplines that question who we are provide us inspiration.

Bent: What is your take on the bending community at large? Where are you in it?
The bending community has given all interested a way to participate in the art community without having to get a pricey art degree. It seems to be an open, accessible community. Being mainly performance artists we feel we are just breaking into this area, but we are happy to be welcomed in it.

Bent: Is there anything you want to accomplish while you are in New York?
Well we have been living here for well over 10 years so we should have theoretically accomplished a lot by now. Hmmmm, hopefully we have taken full advantage of being here. Anyway, during the festival we definitely look forward to learning more from everyone participating.

Bent: Who are you most excited to see at Bent? Why?
We are most excited to see Dr. Bleep because we met him in 2008 and had a great time eating Korean food with him. We didn't get to hang out with him enough, but he is super nice and makes cool anthropomorphic noise monsters.

Artist Name: Gannon || Real Name: Aj Pyatak || Location: Los Angeles in body, somewhere tropical in spirit



Bent: Before you got into circuit bending, what type of music or art where you into?
I grew up on a steady diet of indie rock in the 90's listening to bands like polvo, silver jews, sonic youth, and dinosaur jr. I still turn to those bands for comfort that good music exists. Now I'm into anything you can hear real love in. The kind of stuff I'd put on an "awesome songs" mixtape. I've always loved all kinds of art, lots of grafitti, Barry McGee!! I went to art school thinking I would be a famous artist one day... there's still plenty of days you know.

Bent: How did you get into circuit bending?
I think I was always on a collision course with circuit bending and electronics I just didn't know it. Last year I was working in a music studio where one of my clients wanted remote control of the talkback function on my mixing desk. I knew they made these devices already, but the one I wanted was out of stock. I happen to stumble upon a web tutorial to build one (thank you internet) and so I set out to build my own. I had no idea what I was doing, but after two burnt out velleman ir kits I got it working. The confidence boost sent me down an internet learning spiral about what else I could build. I've always made music so I when I found out you could take casio keyboards apart and rewire them I was sold! That was February 2009, now I'm addicted to the bend!

Bent: Where do you find inspiration for your work?
Everywhere! I get inspired by great music and art, as well as terrible 80's television. The Fullhouse holiday episode where Jesse makes it snow in SF. Casper Electronics, Eric Archer, Karl Klomp, I like their style. I have some really talented friends too, and they help to keep the magic alive. Jim Diotte from Between The Pine, Bryan Tysinger genius of the slide. Oh... and the Olympics, I've been Olympics crazy this year. I like watching people compete and really mean it. Like the first Kickboxer movie.

Bent: What is your take on the bending community at large? Where are you in it?
I think the idea of circuit bending as a community in the first place is great. I'm really new to all of it so I don't know how much weight my opinion holds, but from what I've seen it's a very friendly growing population of smart people who want to make cool things for themselves instead of consuming someone else's one size fits all jam. Me... again I'm the rookie trying to prove myself. Expect a home run one day.

Bent: Is there anything you want to accomplish while you are in New York?
Survive Bent Fest! I get nervous, but I'm in it to win it. Aside from that there's a few things. Eat pizza at Rosario's on the Lower East Side. (I used to live around the corner from it for years, and it's goooood.) Visit my old school and see what the profs are up to. Eat a bagel. Meet up with Roger and Dave from Beatles on Uke Project. Win a staring contest. The usushh.

Bent: Who are you most excited to see at Bent? Why?
I'm excited to see everyone. I've never seen anyone do this stuff live, nor have I done it. (points for using the word "nor") I've watched youtube stuff, but it's just not the same.

Artist Name: Philip White || Location: Brooklyn, NY

Watch a sample video of Four Panels here!

Bent: Before you got into circuit bending, what type of music or art where you into?
My background is as a guitarist/composer. Growing up I played a lot of punk music before getting way into delta blues. I went to college for jazz and started composing chamber music there. After school, my tastes became a bit more experimental and I started working with computers, doing installation work, and some live processing.

Bent: How did you get into circuit bending?
When I was starting my second year of grad school, the motherboard on my computer crapped out. I was already way into feedback systems and I had no money to buy another computer. I kind of looked at my mixer and said “may as well do this…..”Pretty soon, I was building an array of processing and control circuits to insert into the feedback loops.

Bent: Where do you find inspiration for your work?
Everywhere…but I particularly like thinking about complex systems: weather, economics, shifts in social power structures, information relationships, etc. Also, of course, in the work of many other noisy electronic musicians and artists and the circuits themselves.

Bent: What is your take on the bending community at large? Where are you in it?
I have nothing but positive things to say about the bending community. On the one hand, almost anyone who does this maintains some crucial characteristics of a five-year-old, that is, there’s a constant sense of exploration and surprise. “WHOA! If stick my finger here it goes bzzzz, slurp-bap!!!”

On the other hand, I think that bending is situated as part of a larger DIY movement, a movement that prizes not only self reliance, but the experience of discovering for one’s self the ways in which the world works. It’s no coincidence that a lot of benders are also great gardeners, cooks, and community organizers.

Bent: Is there anything you want to accomplish while you are in New York?
Since I live here, I’m really excited to connect to a larger community of hackers.

Bent: Who are you most excited to see at Bent? Why?
Tomomi Adachi. His work is amazing.

Artist Name: LÖWENZAHN || Real names: Daniel Fishkin, Kenji Garland || Location: New York!



Bent: Before you got into circuit bending, what type of music or art where you into?

As a teenager, I was reared on punk rock, and studied jazz in high school. In college, I discovered the daxophone, which is a beautiful wooden instrument that one plays with a cello bow. A distant relative of the musical saw and mbira, the daxophone resembles in appearance an exotic spatula, and tends to sound anywhere between a violin, trumpet, or warthog. The daxophone makes sound when the vibrating strip of wood is forced into a c-curve; this perhaps the original "bent" instrument. There's virtually no way to play the daxophone unless you build one yourself, so I started clamping pieces of scrap wood to the workbench. This inspired me to start building my own instruments, and over the years I've made many, many, many mistakes.

Bent: How did you get into circuit bending?

I remember being fascinated by circuit bent machines at concerts before I had even a glimmer of electronics knowledge. This was years ago, and later (circa 2005) when I first started to learn how to build acoustic instruments, I destroyed some old toys while teaching myself how to solder. This happened again and again, even after I started to get the hang of things. Boom—broken toys. I put bending aside for a long time and began learning more about electronics, in order to make circuits that would work the way I designed them to.

Then, in 2007, I found a hidden repository of reed switch matrices at P&T Surplus, Kingston NY, on a hot tip from Bob Bielecki. Reed switches are tiny filaments encased in glass which connect when you raise a magnet over them—once upon a time, they were used in computer keyboards and relay networks. Initially I simply loved to listen to the delicate clicking of the reed switches, but later I realized that the boards on which they came had a circuit path, and would translate perfectly for circuit bending.

I've made several revisions to the boards as I've found them, from wiring up my own matrices from scratch, and using the existing wire traces. I find this interface much more interesting than a series of switches—glide a magnet over the board, and clusters of bends are made and unmade in response to your gesture. While sometimes unpredictable, I like the tactile nature of this interface. Different sizes of magnets produce different sounds; I like to bend keyboards, and find this emphasis on materials not too distant from Cage's practice with the prepared piano.

Bent: Where do you find inspiration for your work?

Much of my work is inspired by Goethe's Faust and dilemmas of striving. Mostly, I'm very lucky to have had some wonderful teachers over the years to bounce ideas off of.

I think Kenji was born knowing how to do everything, because whenever I find myself lost in the nest of wires, he always has the answer. Originally Kenji entered this project as a visual component, but his musical instincts are so superb that it's hard not to meet on a musical realm. Kenji does most of his work here in MAX/MSP and Jitter, and it is a little scary (and exciting) to have the computer so close to the magnets. Besides visual patches tailored to each piece, Kenji is also running software which converts our voices into midi-data, which controls the bent keyboards I use.

Electronic music can be both stupidly low-tech and problematically hi-tech. We embody this dialectic on stage by using computers to influence the keyboards, and then modifying these keyboards with tools which threaten to utterly obliterate the computer.

Bent: What is your take on the bending community at large? Where are you in it?

In response to this question, I will quote the chorus from my composition, "a history of electronic music" (2008).

"I was playing with myself
back when everyone was doing mixer feedback—
close the door
so mom can't come in, if she comes back
I was playing with my action figures
while you were cutting sheet metal on stage—
hold Silver Surfer up to mom's exercise bike,
and give him a new face."

Bent: Is there anything you want to accomplish while you are in New York?

Well, I live here now, so while everyone else is visiting here for BENT2010, I want to stay up really late with all these great artists and tour the polish bakeries in greenpoint when they open at 2 am! pumpernickel!

Bent: Who are you most excited to see at Bent? Why?

I'm very excited to see bodytronix—Eric Archer is a friend of mine with whom I've traded instruments. It looks like they have a lot of equipment this year! I'm also very excited to see Casper Electronics, who I believe very in touch with the spirit of bending.

For more information and updates, visit http://myspace.com/dandelionfiction

So, you may have heard about this giant cloud of ash that's descended over the flight path to NYC from Europe-- Bent Fest 2009 alum and UK native Stu Smith sure has... and he's not going to be able to get here for his performance on Friday. BUT NEVER FEAR! Local heroes Burnkit 2600 have stepped in to take Threep's place this Friday.



Even though we'll miss Stu's return to the Festival, we're super excited to have Burnkit back at this year's Bent Festival!

We're now just 20 people at the $25 level away from making our goal-- there's only 13 hours to go, though, so please get the word out as we count down. DONATE NOW AT KICKSTARTER!

With your help, we can do this!

Artist Name: Daniel Temkin || Location: New York

A selection of Daniel's Sector works will be on display during Bent Festival.

Bent: Before you got into circuit bending, what type of music or art were you into?
 DT: I'm very interested in photography that deals with the psychological and social effects of commercialism. Hans Aarsman and Matt Siber are two photographers whose work I admire. I'm also drawn to photographers with great sensitivity to place: Walker Evans, Eggleston, Shore, Jeff Brouws, etc. These are themes I address in my own work.

  Bent: How did you get into circuit bending?
  DT: Photography has been my primary artistic focus for the last decade. Meanwhile, I've been working as a programmer. Databending was how I first united these interests in one project. Since then, I've expanded into forms of new media that also combine programming and visual art, but it was the discovery of databending that first encouraged me to write software as part of an art project.

Much of my databent work is concerned with exploring and exploiting the limitations and visual artifacts of tools: in this case, the image file formats themselves. I was inspired in part by the early abstract expressionists, who broke the illusion of the image to expose the qualities of paint and canvas. JPEGs look very different from BMP files when you insert random data strings into them; each can be broken in a different way, and reveal something unique about that file format. This interested me because we usually treat them as interchangeable, and don't think of them as having any real personality. It was a way to look at the data, instead of through it.

This is a continuation of the sensibility I brought to much of my film work before I started working digitally: adding light leaks, staining and scratching film, doing long exposures that revealed unusual color unique to the film stock, etc. But with film, it was more of a struggle to maintain enough control over the outcome to create work that interested me aesthetically. Databending has just the right balance of control and chaos. Many effects are repeatable, but always somewhat different with each image.

 It's that experimentation that makes this style fun to work in. I'm sure that, if this style becomes popular enough, someone will release a set of Photoshop filters to allow the databent "look" to be created on the spot, and take the thrill away from doing this type of work. But until then, I will happily continue misusing software to get the effects I like.

  Bent: Where do you find inspiration for your work?
  DT:  The project I'm showing, Sector, focuses in part on readdressing Pop Art, so I've collected iconic images in tune with that movement: a Heinz bottle, a garbage truck, a film leader. Some are referencing particular pieces, such as my cow images. One great thing about using iconic images is that they remain highly recognizable after being scrambled or broken.

  Bent: What is your take on the bending community at large? Where are you in it?
  DT: The bending community is surprisingly open. When I was starting out, I had artists reach out to me, providing early encouragement to work that, at the time, was very rough. It's even better for people getting started now, with the great tutorials available online, the five or six databending groups on Flickr, and of course the workshops at The Bent Festival.

  Bent: Who are you most excited to see at Bent? Why?
DT: I'm thrilled to see such a variety of work in different media this year. Many of the artists at this year's festival are new to me, and I'm excited to see their work in person.

Catch Playboy's Bend at the Bent Festival on Saturday April 24th at 9pm. Here's a video from the Absurdity.Biz Bent Festival 2009 DVD available at this year's fest and soon on the web.

Artist Name: KBD || Real names: Michael Kimaid (MK), Toledo, OH; Gabe Beam (GB), Toledo, OH; Colin Helb (CH), Philadelphia, PA



Bent: Before you got into circuit bending, what type of music or art were you into?

MK: I started playing music in the hardcore scene of the late 80's, early '90's, and played drums for Snapcase before leaving Buffalo to go to graduate school. I always found the energy and confrontational messages in punk, hardcore and metal liberating, and the visceral reaction those crowds have toward music always provided an instant measure of the music's power. Concurrently, being a drummer in that time and place also meant deconstructing and refracting meaning through every movement Neil Peart from Rush was making and had ever made beforehand. I poured over every change in drum sets, every essay in Modern Drummer magazine, every new fill or ride cymbal pattern. Where hardcore allowed for ideological liberation and unrestrained energy, Neil Peart provided a model of discipline, technique, focus and deliberate methodology.

GB: I started playing music my first year at college in Toledo, basically a blues-based psychedelic jammy group, which was open enough for improvisation and experimenting, after a couple of sit in jam sessions with random musicians in the late 90's I became interested in solo work through tone generators, field recordings and synthesizers, around that time I started working with computers and sequencers in which I scored a feature length soundtrack for a local film. After the soundtrack I started working with a percussionist, diving into the world of free improvisational music in which I've continue today.

CH: Like Mike, I also first got into playing music in the hardcore scene, first as a guitarist and later as a bassist, playing in several forgotten bands in the Philly/South Jersey scene. Separated by a few years and a few hundred miles (I grew up outside of Trenton, NJ), it speaks loudly to social aspects scene that years later we discovered several common friends, acquaintances, and favorite bands shared between us. Along with hardcore and punk (the first song I played in front of people was "California Über Alles" by the Dead Kennedys at my junior high talent show) I also got heavily into psychedelic and experimental pop music with my first "real band" Dewback. After leaving for college, I continued to play in nearly any band who would have me, allowing me opportunities to play a large variety of genres (punk, rock, bluegrass, jazz, improvisational, atonal, etc.) on a variety of instruments (bass, guitar, upright, keys, drums) and tour extensively. Throughout, my first love has always been experimental music performance, fabrication, and production.

Bent: How did you get into circuit bending?


 
GB: Since I was 10 years old, I was always taking electronics apart and investigating how they work. I learned soldering at a young age, eventually merging music/sound creation into my interest into electronics.

CH: While I wouldn't call myself a circuit bender as much as an electronic hacker, I think I first got into it just as anyone else would: through perpetual searching for new sounds and the curiosity that accompanies that search. My mom would say I take after my grandfather who was, in her words, "also always inventing weird things."

MK: The liberation that hardcore initially provided eventually became a new constraint. Expectations to reproduce performance rather than explore in or during performance seemed as much of a hamstring on artistic liberation that other more institutional trappings of conformity represented. The variation and unpredictability in circuit bending and improvisational ethic offers another way, and it allows me to bring the seemingly paradoxical ethics I mentioned earlier into convergent practice.

Bent: Where do you find inspiration for your work?


 
MK: Theoretically, I strongly identify with Jacques Attali's consideration of sound in "Noise: The Political Economy of Music." In the culmination of Attali's work, sonic performance becomes an act of resistance to the technocratic monoculture of commodification and conformity, and celebrates the symbolic forms of communication we've lost with the onset of modernity and its ubiquitous manner of standardization. Much of Eddie Prevost's writing and the recent collection of essays "Noise and Capitalism" expand and refine much of Attali's work, offering new theoretical directions in the process.

CH: Attali's scholarship is a common thread between Mike, Gabe, and myself. Beyond that, I enjoy the attempt to sonically or tonally interpret the innocuous and mundane. Such as: how do I play "Tuesday" or "green?"

GB: I would have to say that I am inspired by a raw curiosity of sound, trying to emulate natural and often everyday noises, therefore mixing those sounds and arranging them in a musical sense along with an appreciation of change events, I feel there is a lifetime of experimentation ahead of me.

Bent: What is your take on the bending community at large? Where are you in it?

GB: I am constantly impressed and intrigued with the ideas and methods of reconstructing instruments and sound devises. I feel its safe to say, that the same curiosity I have for unearthing new sounds, is a common motivation for anyone making music today's music, regardless of genre.

MK: The experimental music scene is so fractious, not necessarily in a contentious way but because you've got a lot of erudite people who are able to articulate the most minute differences in their approaches that sets one group off from another in a way that uninitiated listeners would have no ability to distinguish. For example, the difference between drone, power electronics, harsh noise, electroacoustics, &c. may be obvious to someone deep into the scene, but impossible to discern to a casual listener. It's a lot like metal in that respect; there's thrash metal, black metal, death metal, grindcore, etc. Ultimately, all those aforementioned subgenres contribute to a greater whole that is widely termed "experimental music," but maybe is more accurately "experimental sound." The means may be different, but the ends are the same. They all seem to gear toward exploration, innovation, the rejection of conventional form and the pursuit of a liberating ethos. As such, the bending community is a new niche of experimental music for us to explore, and I'd have to say we are peripheral to it at best. That said, we know at the root of any branch division that the essence of our approach lines up with bending in both theory and practice. We're committed to sonic exploration, and these are relatively uncharted territories for us in that respect.

CH: I agree with Mike. The fractured nature of what can be considered a part of experimental music and art in general or specifically circuit bending is matched by a wonderfully bizarre dispersed, yet strangely interconnected, community. It is not unlike early punk and hardcore scenes, only with the invaluable assistance of the Internet. The international nature of it is particularly exciting.

Bent: Is there anything you want to accomplish while you are in New York?

CH: I like Gray's Papaya, Mike and Gabe are vegetarians. I spent a semester at NYU in 1994 and I like to walk by my old dorm on Fifth Avenue and think about how much money was spent for me to live there. Aside from that, seeing friends, walking around, and seeing some music. April 24th is also my birthday, so... I guess enjoying that.

MK: We have no expectations or predetermined outcomes, just to have a good time, meet some like-minded people, to leave inspired and full of ideas to build on later. In the meantime, if people hear us and take something positive from the experience, we're all better for having been a part of it.

GB: performing in a new setting and for relative strangers is always a plus for me; I look forward to embracing the city and all the culture that I can pull inspiration from.

Bent: Who are you most excited to see at Bent? Why?

MK: I'm not gearing so much toward any particular artists, but to see the festival as a whole and take it in. I'm sure I'll be both inspired and humbled by the artists who we're performing with, and I'm excited to see them all. The venue looks great, the organization has been impressive, and we're glad to be a part of it.

CH: I have been intermittently listening to the other participants over the past few weeks. I love what European musicians bring to the table and always like to catch anyone I am less likely to see again in the near future. Beyond that, "talking shop" with others is always a great time. I am also super excited to visit The Tank.

GB: I am excited to see the creations and enjoy others "labor of love". I can't single out anyone in particular. I'm more or less looking forward to being an audience member as well as a performer.

This year, we plan to make Bent Festival bigger and better with your help! Donations will go toward paying artists, travel expenses for out-of-towners, and materials for installations and workshops.

To donate now, visit http://bit.ly/bentstarter

Space for Bent Festival is generously donated by Two Trees Management Co. Funding for Bent Festival is provided in part by the New York State Council for the Arts and the Black Rock Arts Foundation.

Editor's note: Due to the volcanic ash surrounding Europe, Threep will not be able to attend Bent Festival. We implore you to check the schedule for updates.

Artist Name: Threep || Location: Leicester, UK



Bent: Before you got into circuit bending, what type of music or art where you into?
I've always had pretty eclectic musical tastes, anything from electro, punk, experimental, electro acoustic, minimalism, IDM, industrial, contemporary classical, I could go on but it would be rather a long list.

Bent: How did you get into circuit bending?
I stumbled across circuit bending about 6 years ago whilst looking for a Speak and Spell on ebay, saw a circuit bent one and was intrigued by the sounds but not prepared to pay the rather hefty price tag. So I did a bit of research made my own and never looked back. I'd never done any electronics before but I've always been good at building things-- and taking things apart, got into to trouble a few times for doing that when I was a kid :)

Bent: Where do you find inspiration for your work?
Lots of places, I'm particularly interested in the work of the early pioneers and experimentalists in electronic music, those who made there own instruments or modified existing technologies to their needs ( BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Raymond Scott, John Cage, Stockhausen etc.). I've always been interested in analogue synthesis, particularly modular synths which dictates a lot of my work, I tend to build quite simple circuits and combine them together to make more complex instruments. My work is often dictated by the materials at hand, I'm always looking around charity shops and bric-a-brac stalls on the market for interesting boxes or things to put electronics in. Museums are great for inspiration, I'm fascinated by archaic victorian gadgets.

Bent: What is your take on the bending community at large? Where are you in it?
Well it's getting pretty big isn't it, and growing by the day. I'm constantly amazed at the different ideas people come up with. I really like that people are very willing to share their ideas and schematics. It's really opened up peoples ears to more extreme sounds, it's starting to filter through into mainstream music. Where am I in it? I wouldn't like to say, I'm too modest :) I think I've gained some recognition for my work, 900 subscribers on YouTube, I get a lot of good comments and messages and hope I've inspired others to have a go themselves.

  Bent: Is there anything you want to accomplish while you are in New York?
Yeah, put on a kick ass show and meet loads of cool people. 

Bent: Who are you most excited to see at Bent? Why?
Pixel Form always puts on a good show, I hope to see some inspirational new acts too. 

Artist Name: Dr. Rek || Location: Fukuoka, Japan || LISTEN

Dr. Rek - Live at Bent Festival 2009 from Derek Sajbel on Vimeo.

Bent: Before you got into circuit bending, what type of music or art where you into?
Electronic music, experimental, avant-garde rock, underground dance music, ska, punk

Bent: How did you get into circuit bending?
Gravichords, whirlies and pyrophones showed up in my favorite local music store in petaluma in 1996. My friend Tavys (BIG TEX) bought it, and shared it with me and our high school buddies. The Q.R. Ghazala Speak 'n Spell track and write-up got us interested and informed about bending. We started collecting thrift store toys, did a lot of wet finger bending. I didn't hardwire anything myself till 2002, as I had burned myself badly with a soldering iron in 1993, and wasn't too gung ho on picking one up again for awhile.

Bent: Where do you find inspiration for your work?
The past, the future, the everything, the nothing.  Also I want to make people have a good time dancing.  My recent work (2006-present) has been highly influenced by the underground acid house movement that began in the mid 80s.  In the early to mid 00s I did many free jazz noisy breakbeat cult bending performances inspired by John Cage, Bogdan Raczynski and my peers.  Overall it could be distilled to re-using / re-interpreting my favorite technology and media for underground music and entertainment forms.

Bent: What is your take on the bending community at large? Where are you in it?
Having experienced workshops and communities in LA, SF, MPLS, NYC & Tokyo I think the bending community is quite positive in general. It's a gateway for the curious and inexperienced, and a deprogrammer for the pedantic mindset.  It is a positive creative force that leads most benders deeper into electronic exploration and surprises you when you least expect it.  I have rarely encountered a bender who isn't happy to share advice and techniques, as the open source DIY aesthetic prevails over the byzantine secret keeping style or we wouldn't be a community.  My involvement in the community of recent takes place a few short bursts of performance and/or documentation each year now that I live in Japan, Bent Festival being the largest, with occasional smaller experimental shows in Japan.  My long term involvement is the Circuit Bending Documentary, for which I have been shooting footage since 2003.  This has transformed into the Bent Festival DVD project of late, but shall be a full feature project when I can get some editing and post assistance (it's tough doing it alone in Japan when your project is mostly in English and you live in boondocks and have a full time job teaching).

Bent: Is there anything you want to accomplish while you are in New York?
Document, interview, perform, maybe DJ, make new friends and contacts, and have a great time.

Bent: Who are you most excited to see at Bent? Why?
With most of this years lineup being new faces that's a tough question and I can't choose just one.  I'm quite excited to see and interview ::vtol:: as he is the first Russian bender I will have met and I have no concept of what bending is like there.  After e-squared's amazing performance last year, I'm really excited to see what they do this year under their new title "Bodytronix", as their circuit building is top notch.  The sound and instruments of Gannon is looking to be full of win.  Also excited for Iain Sharp's circuit bent video mixers as circuit bent video devices are a goldmine yet to be fully tapped.

We will be featuring Bent Festival performers and installation artists every other day, check back often for videos and interviews!

Artist Name: Futuree Circuits || Location: Brooklyn, NY

Bent: Before you got into circuit bending, what type of music or art where you into?
I was destroying and taking things apart for a long time before I knew there was such a thing as bending. I had some rock bands that kind of turned into toy/monster bands as I incorporated my new instruments into them.

Bent: How did you get into circuit bending?
My best friend introduced me to it as a concept, i.e. you can take apart toys and make them make different sounds, which had never occurred to me before. Once I had the concept, it wasn't difficult to put it into practice, and I've been self-taught ever since, learning "real" electronics as I've needed it for my work. Everything I do is about discovering new worlds and bending/building fits nicely into that.

Bent: Where do you find inspiration for your work?
I'm interested in immersive environments such as religious cults and the music of La Monte Young. When I create a piece or an instrument I want it to be a "world" - that is, to have its own behaviors, propositions and conventions. Like the world that we live in, the worlds I create have to be visceral and approachable, so as to be convincing. If I can create something like this then I've fulfilled my goal.

Bent: What is your take on the bending community at large? Where are you in it?
I'm not really a part of it, in that I don't communicate very much with other benders. I do take inspiration from other artists, though, so I'm more an inspired spectator than a member of a community. The fact that a community has arisen is great for encouraging collaboration, a shared sense of purpose and a feeling of the value of your work, but it can be confining. I think the bending community is unusually accepting, for a subculture, of deviance and creativity, but it still has its propositions and ideologies.

Bent: Is there anything you want to accomplish while you are in New York?
My main goal as a resident right now is growing a vegetable garden. I've tried to go to the Dream House twice, but it's been closed both times. I did get to go in the Dream Car. I visited Roosevelt Island recently and found out that it has an air tram over the East River!

Bent: Who are you most excited to see at Bent? Why?
I'm excited to be immersed in the aesthetic, because I think that there's definitely an aesthetic within this community that I don't fully understand, because I'm not part of the community. I'm more interested in the ideas conveyed by style than any particular artist. Hopefully I'll get some ideas that will influence my own work.

We are thrilled to announce that Two Trees has generously donated space to hold Bent Festival at 81 Front Street in DUMBO (Brooklyn).

Hi folks and welcome to another year of Bent Festival. We are very excited about this year's lineup and are rushing to get the performance and workshop schedule. We are spending this week getting the website back in order, so check back soon, and thanks for your patience.