casio sk-1, friendo ed.

This Casio Sk-1 was bent according to R. Ghazala’s Circuit-Bending: Build Your Own Alien Instruments, much like my Speak and Read. This was my second piece, finished in 2009. I adore this instrument, I suspect due to the amount of time I spent modifying and creating it. That is the real payoff for me in most bending projects: the time I spend touching and altering the instrument’s casing, buttons, circuit boards. I begin to shape the tool, compose the instrument. A bent instrument is interesting to me in that it is both a composition itself and a means to compose, and to a new media/sonic composition researcher (me), this is fascinating and theoretically important. Emerging technologies that enable users to compose differently–for better or for worse–also restrict users in very familiar ways. What and how we compose is always predetermined and blackboxed by designers/programmers. I understand this is necessary for many companies, by the way. But what happens when we un-box, modify, mutate, and destroy the instruments of composition? What happens to the compositions that emerge from this new instrument?

The answer to this is contentious, as you can easily read in responses to circuit bending videos. Some find it cutting edge and brilliant, even beautiful. Others find it to be nihilistic, noisy, and naturally, a waste of time. I understand both reactions, and think that particular argument is less useful than considering what is happening underneath the “is it cool?” level of evaluation. That is, what sorts of implications arise from the practice of circuit bending that can inform other modes of composition and technological critique? And so on… But these questions are too big for one blog post, so I’ll leave it there and invite comments.

I’ve used this instrument in several tracks, from percussion to ambient/noise textures. A diagram wouldn’t be all that helpful; again, I would point you toward Ghazala’s text to see what I’ve done here.