It’s on! The Circuit-bending challenge is officially underway!

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

A quick review of the guidelines:

1. Bicycle, walk, or swim to your nearest secondhand store.

2. Locate and purchase a cheap electronic noisemaking device.

3. Take it home and bend that thang!

4. Document the process and end result, then upload it to the internet in some fashion- Youtube, Flickr, etc, all with the tag “circuitchallenge.” (and createdigitalmusic, of course). Still images, audio, and video are all fair game. Bonus points for all 3.

5. Add a comment to this post with links to your entry. I will add them to the post itself as they are received.

You have until midnight on Sunday. Go!*

(* or whenever you like, because we don’t know what time zone you’re in … see comments for further disclaimers.)

An auto-updating slideshow of all flickr’d entries can be seen at getlofi.com, thanks to the esteemed Circuit Master.

Here are the entries, in order received:


Zombie Jesus by Ryan J:

Link

Mini-Furby by George Lazenbleep (With excellent documentation!):

Link

Mystery Black Box by Evil Paul:

Link

Plastic Guitar by Stephen Haunts:
Stephen Haunt
Audio
Link

The Monster by El Colin

Zapper by Vanillatray:

Link

Circuit Bent Toy Guitar by Johan & Lukas Larsby (bonus points for hilarious video):

Some kind of bleepy, blinky thing from BRIAN!

Images

A Saxophone from Fin, which died in the process:
fin sax
Audio
Link

Squelchbox knocks it outta the park with “The15 Puzzle”:

Images

Burnkit gear’s Kawa Clone:
burnkit gear
Link w/audio

Octatone’s 99-cent guitar:

Link

Kubton’s Little Tykes Keyboard:
kubton
Audio
Link

VJ Anomolee destroys the Easy Button:
vj anomolee
Video
Link

Here’s my own personal contribution to the day: A Prenatal Heart Listener

Looks like some fierce competition already- keep those entries coming!

[Ed. note: We left out a reference to Reed Ghazala’s superb book on the topic in our story the other day, so let me mention it again. Reed’s Circuit Bending tome is the best paper reference to this stuff. If you feel a little, ahem, inadequate on skills after seeing the artistry in these entries, as I certainly do, it’s the place to go. Now that you’ve got your feet wet, well worth checking out the book for some additional chops! -PK]

61 responses to “Let the Circuit-Bending Challenge begin!”

  1. "You have until midnight on Sunday. Go! "

    Some of us in different time zones might be late 🙂

  2. octatone says:

    Two days? And I thought it was a one day bendathon.

  3. Peter Kirn says:

    Let me be clear — we're musicians. Our, erm, sense of deadlines is fluid even WITHOUT time zones mucking things up. And as I'm regularly collaborating with Australia (Jaymis in particular), I sure don't know what day it is any more. So even if you're on Mike's Chicago Standard Time, bend the guidelines of this bending challenge as much as your, uh, bending.

    That means right now, or several hours ago, or several hours from now you may officially begin this one or two day challenge until such time as comes the stroke of midnight in Greenwich, or Greenwich, Connecticut, or somewhere with really nice bells on Sunday or Monday if you put things off because the stores were closed Sunday and your significant other wanted to do something other than bending or maybe you really started a bit early but can go until a few hours later when you're done.

    Void where prohibited, unless you're a bada** and want to bend the rules, in which case unprohibit that sucker.

    So, yeah, just bend something nowish / soonish and you're good.

  4. ryan j says:

    Well I didn't have a lot of time this weekend so I decided to do a quick little hard bend and add some LEDs to a Tales of Glory Talking Jesus Doll.

    All I could find was pitch up, and pitch down points. No glitch points to be found on this minimal black blob toy.

    Sorry for the low quality photos, but it's better than none at all. 🙂

    Photos:
    http://s134.photobucket.com/albums/q81/shuutobi/Z

    Video: (The LEDs are brighter IRL)
    http://youtube.com/watch?v=sKMBbiBDYc4

  5. Thomas says:

    Any possibility to bend it and evidence it tomorrow? I'm working a show today/tonight and all the shops are closed. :/

  6. Peter Kirn says:

    Thomas: totally. Even here in NY, some of my favorite shops are closed. I can't imagine what happens for people living in Paris, etc.

    So, yes, we totally, absolutely expect to do Bending Challenge Day 2 tomorrow / Monday.

  7. Keith Handy says:

    That means right now, or several hours ago, or several hours from now you may officially begin this one or two day challenge until such time as comes the stroke of midnight in Greenwich, or Greenwich, Connecticut, or somewhere with really nice bells on Sunday or Monday if you put things off because the stores were closed Sunday and your significant other wanted to do something other than bending or maybe you really started a bit early but can go until a few hours later when you’re done.

    I love sentences like that. 🙂

  8. Here is my entry for the challenge. It was a bit of a pain because the charity shops in my local town were closed, but I found some toys from earlier on in the year that I hadn't bend yet.

    Hope you like. There is an mp3 clip to listen too also 🙂

    http://thehauntedhouse.blogspot.com/2007/10/circu

  9. El Colin says:

    Circuit Bending Challenge!

    Experience the sweetness feel to flying the music sea!

    I haven't bent anything in a couple months because I just relocated. To South Korea. This got me moving. I feel great knowing that people are going through the some of the crap I had to go through to make this awesome thing in one day. Lack of supplies kills me, but it made it special and even more of a challenge. I am happy with the end result. "The Monster" I suppose is fitting for the result.

    My blog has pictures, the video of the final product and a bonus video diary type thing of my running around crazy all day.

    http://whereheremeetsthere.blogspot.com/2007/10/e

    My partner in circuits should be posting one soon as well:
    http://whereheremeetsthere.blogspot.com/

    The video of the final product is here also:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WVMUnlOTVY

    The video of the process is here also:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHW4q199et8

  10. van says:

    http://vanillatray.blogspot.com/2007/10/circuit-b

    Here is my entry. Links to the youtube and flickr can be found on there.

  11. Hi Michael, I think you have put the wrong link on for my plastic guitar on the above post. oops 🙂

    Steve

  12. Johan Larsby says:

    My entry here
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0ERkorfMBk

    I'd just like to say that you other guys stuff are awesome!

  13. Michael Una says:

    oops! Sorry Stephen, link is fixed. Thanks for the heads-up.

  14. Peter Kirn says:

    Okay, my jaw is on the floor.

    You folks are freaking amazing.

    I still encourage simple hacks, just to make the rest of us feel a little less n00bular. 😀 So keep them coming in!

    Peter

  15. El Colin says:

    Hi Mike!

    This was a great time! Why didn't you do this sooner? –

    My video isn't up with the others.

    "The Monster" by El Colin
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WVMUnlOTVY

    Thanks for the opportunity!

    It was awesome!

    Can't wait to see the other bends!

  16. Fin says:

    Just spent 6 hours on bending a saxophone toy and it just broke. Lorddd… Erggg… 🙁

  17. ryan j says:

    Don't feel too bad, I've toasted an sk-1 before. 🙁

  18. Ahh bad luck Fin. Post some pics anyway!! I had a soldering accident with mine. Left the iron on a lead to long and it fell out the board. Got it back in eventually. lol

  19. "so, I am in"

    but just got done with work- will post my bend in a while- purchased a noise toy at the "will"- Now-will start the mayhem!!! ok-she is a little lame- but what can you do, when its all chance!

    cool man

    igloo

  20. Peter Kirn says:

    Yes, "bending casualties" are just as welcome in this challenge. Keeps it real.

  21. BRIAN! says:

    heres the link to my flickr gallery of it. youtube soon!

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/16726222@N03/sets/72

  22. Michael Una says:

    And…. I just killed mine. Lemme see if I can resurrect it.

  23. Fin says:

    Haha… okay here's my casualty.
    http://ceido.co.uk/?p=20

  24. BRIAN! says:

    heres the video of it in action http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6sQUftrCl0

    last night when we were playing with it our hall light was flickering and it was making awesome noises with the LDR. i will take and post another video of it with the flickering light tonight.

    CHOICE!

  25. squelchbox says:

    Here we go. The vids still uploading to youtube but the pics made it to flickr by 11:30, whew 8)

    http://www.flickr.com/squelchbox

  26. Kubton says:

    Rats a few minutes late. I tried but life intervened.

    Anyway my (late)entry is is here:

    http://kubton.com/cbc.html

    Had fun doing it and seeing other creations.

  27. […] Here’s a red kawasaki clone keyboard. Black blob inside. My entry into the circuit challenge. […]

  28. Kevin Rees says:

    Here's my entries:

    Photos<a>

    Short video of the results

    I also posted a bit on my website, but it's showing the post for today even though I posted it yesterday. I will be doing more of a write up on it as we did it as kind of a bending workshop, even though I pretty much bent everything.

    Thanks!

    -Kevin

  29. Kevin Rees says:

    I put in a long comment with links to everything I did, but it says that it went to spam. Hopefully it will get caught, and put up.

  30. Peter Kirn says:

    I think what's happening is our spam filter is getting freaked out by all the links. 🙂

    If ANYONE has problems, they can email me directly, peter (at) create digital music (dot) com. I can actually recover your comment pretty easily from the spam filter; I just need to know who it is and that it's there because we get hundreds of spam comments per hour. (really!)

  31. Kevin Rees says:

    Hey Peter,

    Thanks for fixing that for me, and for being part of getting this event going. I'm looking forward to next time/year (if there is one) so I can focus on just mine piece since I ended up bending 4 things.

    -Kevin

  32. Peter Kirn says:

    There will definitely have to be a next time! We may even want other themed challenges; this was really amazing.

    And to everybody else, still keep sending in those late entries — we'll have a round up real soon now, so everyone not currently in the story above, I think we'll just have a master story with everything. Or something. Working on that. 🙂

  33. Michael Una says:

    All right, all entries up until now should be posted. Drop me or Peter a line if your entry didn't get in there.

    My own creations died, both of them. I was going to enter as "exhibition" anyway, not actualy competing, but oh well.

    That's the way the circuit crumbles.

  34. Kevin Rees says:

    Yeah, my first one ended up being a dud as well, so I had to go and get a replacement that wasn't nearly as interesting. That's a good representation of circuit bending though, because you just never fully know what will happen once you start.

  35. octatone says:

    Yeah, I spent an hour or two trying to bend a leapfrog toy and never got it to do anything. Also, I was kind of ticked at the amount of completely broken toys at the huge Goodwill by my place. But I did see a bent boombox out in the wild: http://flickr.com/photos/74116646@N00/1794445069/

    Can't wait for your themed challenges. Kudos everyone! Someone should throw all the bends up on a wiki for future reference. I know I'll be putting some of these items on my buy it if you see it list.

  36. loss1234 says:

    OK

    Here is my entry. If anyone knows where i can post samples, please let me know. i dont have a video camera.

    i just started bending this summer, so i am still very new to this.

    Anyway , my unit incorporates a homemade cd4001 lfo i tucked away inside a breakout box, its got pitch and lfo speed, and a 1/4" output. its a really cool bend and I am so glad i did the contest. I had to work late so this had to get posted this morning.

    here is the link to the photos:

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/13918667@N02/sets/72

    if you want to hear it, just email me at

    subjectivity@hotmail.com

  37. octatone says:

    You can upload quickly to archive.org

  38. There was nothing too great from my toy find from yesterday! The results can be found on my myspace/igloomartian. It was fun-

    cool man

    Igloo

  39. loss1234 says:

    http://www.archive.org/details/CircuitChallenge

    here is the soundbite of my circuit challenge monster

  40. octatone says:

    BTW, when can we get together and do some guitar ensemble playing guys?

  41. Here ya go…I tried to post this last night, the submit called it spam. Youtube and flickr stuff was posted before midnight (webpage was updated with some samples just past midnight).


    http://www.robthefiddler.com/electronics-audio-di


    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKmo9Rf-n0k

  42. reid says:

    here is a blog post of my bent challenger:

    http://whereheremeetsthere.blogspot.com

    i finished it at 3am after a whole day of adventures (power outages, broken heating, etc, etc) and was to tired to edit together a video, but ill get that up on youtube shortly.

  43. Woot! Just got my photos up using Bubblr:
    http://www.pimpampum.net/bubblr/?id=10184

    You can see all those pix on flickr under the tag 'circuitbendingchallenge' as well, of course – but those are not yet annotated.

  44. Kevin Rees says:

    Blurb on my webpage now…

    here

  45. octatone says:

    Added to the 99-cent guitar and found some more noise it makes:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BqvB44x9hI

  46. octatone says:

    What the fridge …

    that "i" or "l" needs to be a capitol I at the end … your comment system is thwarting me 😛

  47. octatone says:

    got it. in the source the commet seystem is trying to convert the link into html or unicode entities. just copy and paste that link and it will work.

  48. […] Big Thanks to Mike Una for suggesting, the Circuit Bending Challenge 2007. Peter Kirn of CDM for hosting the forums and to everyone for playing along. Keep those submissions coming of you haven’t posted already. In the mean time we’re gonna start deliberating on the winners. –CM […]

Leave a Reply to squelchbox Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *