Circuit Bending can be defined as "the creative short-circuiting of low voltage, battery-powered electronic audio devices such as guitar effects, children's toys and small synthesizers to create new musical instruments and sound generators." I began my exploration of this established artform in July 2004 while studying in Sweden when I stumbled across an interview of Reed Ghazala posted on the internet. Earlier that year I had been working with found electronic devices and became curious as to what would happen if the insides of those devices were opened and hacked. Reed's Interview revealed a rich world of possibilities without even a single how-to. I rushed out to the local toy store and picked up a couple of keyboards for about $10 a piece and set to bending. I lacked the appropriate tools, however, and would have to wait until I returned home for the holidays to really get my hands dirty. I purchased several toys on eBay to have waiting for my return and used what tools I had lying about to fashion some of my first circuit bent creations at the start of the new year.

When spring of 2005 rolled around, I had amassed a formidable army of circuit bent toys and got the bright idea to start performing with them. I started been working with Pure Data as a means of recording samples from the bent toys and manipulating both the toys and the samples in realtime. It was a distinct move to start performing and to get away from the through composed musique concrete style I had been comfortable with. Although it was an interesting spectacle to be up on stage with a laptop and a table of helplessly tweeked toys, I felt like something was missing from the performance. Bobbing about wildy over a table of odd electronics resembled some sort of occult ritual and was a little removed from the wild sounds coming out of the speakers. I needed to have the process visualized to ease people into the subdued madness taking place on stage. After watching a few underground electronic groups in Denver perform around town I got the hint that live video projection was a way to draw people into the performance. I had my own ideas about video though and would be damned if I was going to let some hack VJ (with all due respect) bust my glitched lo-fi aesthetic with some super smooth screensaver eyecandy. I had an old TI computer lying about for speech chip bending purposes but couldn't find the right cartridge to tap into it. I figured since I wasn't going to use it for anything else, that I should pop it open and start prodding about. After the first few contacts I had found pure 8-bit pixellated gold. In May 2005 I had completed my first TI99 bend and life has never been the same since.

Today I have bent 6 TI99 computers and fried only one (due to some stray wire running over the power supply). The prototype for all these successive versions was debuted at the Mercury Cafe in Denver to an awestruck audience. I believe I was working with the TI99, my modified Casio SK-1, and a custom built joystick synth. The way things worked in the olden days was by a process I called "mind melding", which created a common ground between devices and feed signals the brain in one device to the other. I was using the Casio's microprocessor to tweek the TI99's video circuitry via direct connections. This worked really well and neither device was harmed even after prolonged periods of glitching. I performed with the same rig at the Apogaea Festival (Colorado Regional Burn) and sold that TI99 (Pixel Maelstrom) to VJ LevlHed. The cash was spent on building another one but I got tired of the Casio's sound and wanted to find a way of getting audio from a CD player or a mixer to drive the video of the TI99. With a little bit of research, guidance from my friend Lorin Parker and a stroke of experimental luck, I was able to hack together a circuit that would take an audio signal and short out different points through a transistor. I sold the second Pixel Maelstrom so I could build version 2 with audio reactivity. After performing in LA and at CalArts with v2 I had to sell it to help pay for graduate school and to build another one. I had this grand idea to add a bunch of oscillators to the TI99 and directly drive the datalines with the signals. The prototyping on the breadboard went well but when the mod was completed, nothing worked. I pulled the mod out and stripped it down to something like the v2 and left the synth in. The result was version 3 which just sold to Martin Fernandez in Florida.

After gaining some form of notariety on the internet for having messed up these computers and performed in various places with them, I entered my work for presentation at the Bent2006 Circuit Bending Festival. My proposal was based on this idea that I would build 3 TI99 computers all with the ability to generate their own audio (like a synth), react to any audio signal (including their own), and react to light. Their configuration was to be such that content would be generated in a network of circular influence. The sounds and video of each device would depend on the sound and video of the other two in the "network". This meant that I had to get cracking on building TI99 mods that would do all these things. Fortunately there was a seminar going on downtown at this place called the Machine Project hosted by Mark Allen featuring Brian Crabtree and his amazing circuit etching smarts. With my newly accuired etching skills and a fresh circuit designed in a CAD program I was ready to get to work. After breadboarding and testing the circuit extensively everything was a go but it took much longer for me to assemble things than I had originally thought. I spent third week of March etching, populating, wiring, drilling, and mounting only to finish 2 of the intended 3 TI99 mods. These version 4 machines were solid though and I was able to "tour" with them along with the trusty version 3. I'm currently selling one of the version 4 machines to pay for version 5 and to take care of education expenses.

What started out as a way of creating synched glitch visuals to circuit bent music transformed into a one trick VJ Tool and then into an audio video synth. At present I'm working on plans to present the TI99 to the art world. See the Installation section for more details.