[circuit bending]
[introduction]
[tools]
[parts]
[exploring the art]
[how it works]
[direct wiring]
[potentiometers]
[capacitors]
[photo resistors]
[solar cells]
[leds]
[humidity sensors]
[body-contacts]
[reset switch]
[line outputs]
[other techniques]
[cautions]
[closing words]
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Circuit-bending is an
electronic art which implements creative audio short-circuiting. This renegade path
of electrons represents a catalytic force capable of exploding new experimental musical
forms forward at a velocity previously unknown. Anyone at all can do it; no
prior knowledge of electronics is needed. The technique is, without a doubt, the
easiest electronic audio design process in existence.
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The circuit-bent instrument, often a re-wired audio toy or game, is an alien instrument:
alien in electronic design, alien in voice, alien in musician interface. Through this
procedure, all around our planet, a new musical vocabulary is being discovered. A new
instrumentarium is being born.
Countless audio gadgets are experimental musical instruments waiting to happen.
Circuit-bending's anti-theory approach to electronic design makes accessible to all audio
explorers an endless frontier of original sound-forms to discover, and fantastic
instruments to create.
Within these adapted devices, along with the unusual voices of circuit-bending, are often
found aleatoric music generators; that is, chance-music composers that stream
unpredictable audio events: elements shifting and re-combining in fascinating ways.
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Body-contacts are also found through circuit-bending. These allow electricity to flow
through the player's body, flesh and blood now becoming an active part of the electronic
sound circuit. This interface extends players and instruments into each other, creating,
in essence, new life forms. An emerging tribe of bio-electronic Audio Sapiens.
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