Circuit Bending Festival/Seminars this weekend

Bent Festival

I'll be going!

So I went to this thing. I took 2 seminars, one that was a basic intro to electronics and one that was supposed to result in an instrument called the pseudophone. The basic class was ok, got a tiny bit of info out of it. The pseudophone(basically an empty vegetable can with a speaker on the inside so you can get a trumpet wah wah effect by cupping the can' opening)didn't go as well. The soldering irons that were provided really sucked. So out of 12 people, only 1 got it done by the time the class ended an hour later. I just need to wire up my speaker to the circuitboard to finish.

On display was this thing called the thingamajig(I think), that was a handheld analog synth(painted to look kinda like My Neighbor Totoro), with a led light on a flexible stalk, a light sensor, and 2 switches(for the oscillator I think). It was kind of fun. Very easy to pick up and use but got old kinda quick.

Next to me in both classes was this hot chick with her friend/bf(couldn't tell). She was really smart and already knew alot of the electronics that we were talking about. I was gonna holler at her cuz it didn't seem like her and her guy friend were 'together'. Then I saw the tatoo on her arm that said 'Scumbag'. I don't even wanna know the story behind THAT.

Later in the afternoon was the Experimental Interfaces seminar. The guy that was doing the demo, showed unusual interfaces including jello(it's conductive because of all of the organic material in it).He stuck 2 wires into it and used it to modulate the sound coming from his circuitboard synth. He jiggled the jello, stabbed a swiss knife into it, etc... Pretty funny stuff. He also did the same sort of thing using this jelly that contains fuel. It's usually used for starting charcoal briquets for bbq's. He put the 2 wires into it like he did with the jello but LIT THE JELLY ON FIRE! It started off by gradually lowering the pitch of the synth until it got to the point where you just heard clicks from the square wave. As the jelly blob shrunk, it had less mass therefore causing the pitch change.

Overall, it was a fun-ish afternoon. There could have been more stuff on display but I guess they could be doing that next year...