If you’re in NYC, you definitely won’t want to miss the Bent festival of circuit-bending music at The Tank on 42nd Street. Each day of the festival this week features workshops on how to warp common electronics from Walkmans to Game Boys into new musical instruments, and concerts of many of the leading musical practitioners of this art form.
By the way, signs I’m getting bogged down by writing work and a book that’s months overdue? How about when the UK-based MusicThing is on top of the Bent Circuit Bending festival before the (cough, cough!) NYC-based CDM that’s had this sitting in my inbox for a week. When MusicThing has a photo of my friend Patrick McCarthy (guitarist) right on the homepage, I know I’m behind!
That said, I will engineer a jailbreak soon to get out there and check some of this out, especially since is The Tank’s swansong before the space gets hit with a wrecking ball. (Ah, NYC progress.) What are deadlines, anyway?
For more information on circuit bending if you’re in the rest of the world that’s not New York, check out Reed Ghazala’s excellent Anti-Theory site.