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.