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Circuit Bending

The impulse to formulate electrical systems which interact directly with the bodies electrical properties has been acted upon by many designers and artists over the years from the Theremin in 1928, to McPherson’s TouchKeys in 2012, and the technology prevalent in touchscreens today. The early circuit bending technique of “Laying Hands”, where the bender licks his fingers and touches random parts of an exposed powered circuit board to quickly determine active areas of the board, has been a mainstay in the tinkerer’s repertoire for decades.

Circuit Bending and Hardware Hacking

The circuit bending and hardware hacking communities served as my introduction to both electronics, and interface design, and have continued to influence the approaches I take when engineering interaction. Both circuit bending and hardware hacking are eccentric, punk, anarchistic pastimes which invite us to subvert the manufacturer's intentions and void your warranty. Within my own work, such as The Retrono, Discovery Synth, Voltage Slammer, and Modular SNES interfaces, I developed the work using a knowledge-on-demand approach to electronics where one learns enough to be safe, have fun, and produce a working end product. The spirit of fun, play, and exploration with which hackers and benders identify with are coincidently paramount tenets of the artistic process employed in the work I created during my BFA and MFA studies especially, but also within my PhD research.

Nicolas Collins and Handmade Electronic Music

Nicolas Collins, born 1954 in New York City, is a pioneer in adopting microcomputers in live music performance. Collins takes advantage of hacked and repurposed electronic devices and serves as the father of hardware hacking. Collins received a B.A. and M.A. from Wesleyan University. Collins has participated in over 300 concerts and installations throughout the world as both a solo artist and as a member of various ensembles. In 2006 Nicolas published the book Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking which has been instrumental in both my own development as a tech-artist as well as for scores of hackers, artists, and electricians from around the globe. Collins is a renowned curator for performance and installation art holding positions at institutions including the Studio for Electro Instrumental Music (STEIM) and the Leonardo Music Journal where Collins became Editor in Chief beginning with their eighth volume in 1998. A year later in 1999 Collins began teaching at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) where here he is currently a professor and chair for the sound department.

In 2002, while teaching a class on electronic art at the Art Institute of Chicago Collins began compiling a .pdf full of information about basic electronics, along with example projects (assignments), for his students to download and use as reference. Although the file was only intended for use by his students, it soon leaked onto the internet and spread like wildfire becoming known as The Original Hacking Manual. Surprised by the success of the class handout and somewhat embarrassed by the quality of his hand drawn circuits, Collins set out to turn the themes of The Original Hacking Manual into a proper book. Handmade Electronic Music was first published in 2006 and again, with revisions, in 2009. The 2009 printing of Handmade Electronic Music along with the PDF The Original Hacking Manual, are collectively the most influential texts in the development of my interest in electronic art. While circuit bending taught me to become comfortable with exploring electronic circuits, the projects in Collins’ texts empowered me to build my own devices from scratch: to invent. The chapters in Handmade Electronic Music explain how to replicate the project, how it operates, why it functions as it does, and even muses to possible extensions to the underlying concepts. It tells you why everything behaves how it behaves while not dumbing down the tech when it is important. The book even introduces artists, and their creations, which are relevant to the topics of each section. My experience with these texts was one of excitement: for the next thing I would learn, about being an artist, and exploring the field. The ideas, projects, and concepts introduced in these texts are simple and that is what makes them so powerful: they showed the power of a little technical knowledge mixed with a lot of creativity.

Peter Blasser

Peter Blasser graduated from the Oberlin College and Conservatory with a degree in electronic music and Chinese, with minors in computer science and ancient Greek, where he briefly taught electronic music and throat singing. In 2001 Blasser apprenticed with Don Buchla while honing his unique approach to synthesizer design. Blasser is an accomplished performer who has toured with various groups across the USA, usually performing with instruments he built. In 2013 Blasser returned to school, this time studying at Wesleyan University, a small liberal arts college in Middletown, Connecticut where he graduated with a Masters in Arts under the advisement of Ron Kuivila in 2015. Blasser currently operates the online company ciat-lonbarde.net which sells electronic instruments Peter designs and builds. Blasser enjoys the role of mentor, and instructor, and often holds workshops and lectures about his work.

For several years, Blasser developed synthesizers under the notion of “inner surface” which involves creating instruments that can produce sound on an exposed interior surface. These instruments involve unprotected circuits which performers are able to touch to directly affect the sounds produced. After his work with inner surface, Peter went on to develop “synthesis clothing” and “Paper Circuits” the latter of which he still develops.

Blasser’s paper circuits, point-to-point soldering, and capacitive interfaces are stunningly creative, unique, and functional. Peter creates novel, fun ways to build relationships with electronic devices through his designs which subtly question the rigidity of electrical engineering. For example, approximately one third of the component values in his schematics are left to the discretion of the builder providing a range of values that could be used instead of a singular value. Blasser does this so each instrument is unique and that the creator of the instrument has a stronger personal bond to the instrument. The closer you look at a Blasser schematic the more you notice Peter’s quirky terminology: including “harry caps” and “X” resistors. His circuits are intentionally unstable and unpredictable while being both reactive and generative. His electronic diagrams are hand-drawn and often use his own symbols in place of industry conventions which he develops according to the electronic effect the component has on the sonic output of the device. This makes it easier for one to transverse the functionality of the circuitry, while imbuing a sense of wonder and exploration when building one of his projects.

In a world dominated by rigid rules and equations, it is refreshing to embrace Blasser’s unique approach to circuit design which I was exposed to during a CalArts workshop with Peter in 2015. Talking to Blasser about his approach to circuit design while building one of his Old Mr. Grassi synthesizers was instrumental in the development of several of the projects tendered in this document. During that week, Peter instilled in me the importance of building a relationship with electronics. Blasser’s own work does this by both maximizing the amount of personality each of his creations have and ensuring that no two devices are identical. Additionally, the workshop experience helped me figure out ways to apply circuit bending techniques and approaches, which rely on a starting object to modify, to the origination of new interfaces which are not built from the dissection, augmentation, or modification of a preexisting electrical system. Peter’s instruments are intended to be touched and felt relying on our bodies’ electrical properties to function: creating a symbiotic relationship between the instrument and musician.

Andrew McPherson

Andrew McPherson is at the forefront of the augmented musical instrument revolution and is an academic powerhouse. Andrew McPherson started his academic career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with dual majors in music and electrical engineering where he continued his graduate studies completing a masters degree in engineering. In 2009, Andrew completed his Ph.D. in music composition at the University of Pennsylvania. After his Ph.D. studies, Andrew worked for two years as a postdoctoral researcher at Drexel University in the Music Entertainment Technology laboratory. In 2011, McPherson began work at the Augmented Instruments Laboratory, a research sub-group within the Centre for Digital Music (C4DM) at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), where he mentors a group of Ph.D. students in developing new instruments, and interfaces, for creative musical expression. McPherson holds the position of Senior Lecturer in Digital Media in the QMUL School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science. Everything that McPherson has produced in his graduate studies and beyond is worth attention, but there are two specific projects that are of particular importance to the topics discussed in this thesis due to their approach to interaction: TouchKeys and D-Box.

TouchKeys

The majority of McPhersons work in the field of instrument design is focused around the creation of augmented instruments, in particular the Magnetic Resonator Piano, which he defines as “a traditional instrument whose capabilities have been electronically extended through new sensors, new types of sound production or new modes of interaction.” This philosophy is mirrored in McPhersons modified Moog PianoBar which is capable of reading continuous key positions of the host device, which can be any full-sized piano-type keyboard instrument. Another portable augmentation for the piano is the TouchKeys interface, which McPherson also invented. TouchKeys is a set of touch sensors that is attached to the tops of the keys of a full-size keyboard instrument such as a piano or organ. They augment the host instruments capabilities by providing data about where the player’s fingers come into contact with the keys as they play. TouchKeys leverage the bodies’ inherent electrical properties to detect not only the location of fingers on the keys but additionally the surface area of each finger in contact with the key. While the fidelity of TouchKeys is indisputably impressive and its compositional implications are profound, it is how the device leverages the electrical properties of our biology that enchanted me to begin work on many of the devices and installations introduced in later chapters. Additionally, the portability of both the TouchKeys and PianoBar proved inspirational when designing interfaces such as my Symbiotic SNES project discussed HERE: which expand upon the idea of portability in device augmentation.

D-Box

The D-Box, created by McPherson in collaboration with Victor Zappi a colleague at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, is not an augmentation of any preexisting instrument but is instead an entirely new instrument which struggles for comparison. The D-Box is conceived from the ground up to be circuit bent by its user and function as an electrical sandbox for new music creation. The personal watermelon sized box includes many features to provide an easy, portable, and engaging circuit bending experience. It provides easily-removable panels providing quick access to a breadboard that houses electric components which affect the synthesis engine running on a Beaglebone Black. The fixed sides house Force Sensitive Resistors (FSRs), and a speaker. By designing for circuit bending and experimentation from the onset, D-Box is capable of a considerably larger range of sounds and behaviors than any circuit bent instrument could hope to embody alone. Aside from its sonic capabilities, what is provocative is the D-Box’s expected mode of interaction: hacking.

References and Related Reading

Nicolas Collins, Hardware Hacking, 2.1 ed. 2004.

S. T. Leo, “Method of and Apparatus for the Generation of Sounds,” US1661058 A, 28- Feb-1928.

L. S. Theremin and O. Petrishev, “The Design of a Musical Instrument Based on Cathode Relays,” Leonardo Music J., vol. 6, p. 49, 1996.

A. McPherson, “TouchKeys: Capacitive Multi-Touch Sensing on a Physical Keyboard.,” in NIME, 2012.

S. Hotelling, J. A. Strickon, and B. Q. Huppi, “Multipoint touchscreen,” US7663607 B2, 16-Feb-2010.

R. Ghazala, Circuit-bending: build your own alien instruments. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Publishing, 2005.

“Nicolas Collins Personal Website,” Nicolas Collins. [Online]. Available: http://www.nicolascollins.com. [Accessed: 30-May-2017].

“Nicolas Collins,” Leonardo/ISAST. [Online]. Available: https://www.leonardo.info/led/806. [Accessed: 30-May-2017].

N. Collins, Handmade Electronic Music: the Art of Hardware Hacking, Second edition. New York: Routledge, 2009.

“Ciat-Lonbarde.” [Online]. Available: http://ciat-lonbarde.net/. [Accessed: 30-May-2017].

Peterb:justb, “Peter B: Just B: Peter Blasser Biography,” Peter B, 11-Mar-2012. .

P. Blasser, “STORES AT THE MALL,” Masters of Arts in Music, Wesleyan University, 2015.

P. Blasser, “Pretty Paper Rolls: Experiments in Woven Circuits,” Leonardo Music J., vol. 17, pp. 25–27, Dec. 2007.

“Peter Blasser (biography).” [Online]. Available: http://www.fondationlanglois.org. [Accessed: 28-Apr-2017].

“andrewmcpherson.org.” [Online]. Available: http://andrewmcpherson.org. [Accessed: 30-May-2017].

“Augmented Instruments Laboratory, C4DM.” [Online]. Available: http://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/~andrewm. [Accessed: 30-May-2017].

P. Bloland, “The Electromagnetically-prepared Piano and its Compositional Implications.,” in ICMC, 2007.

A. McPherson and Y. Kim, “Augmenting the Acoustic Piano with Electromagnetic String Actuation and Continuous Key Position Sensing.,” in NIME, 2010, pp. 217–222.

A. McPherson, “Portable Measurement and Mapping of Continuous Piano Gesture.,” in NIME, 2013, pp. 152–157.

A. McPherson, “Buttons, Handles, and Keys: Advances in Continuous-Control Keyboard Instruments,” Comput. Music J., vol. 39, no. 2, pp. 28–46, 2015.

A. McPherson and Y. Kim, “Design and Applications of a Multi-Touch Musical Keyboard,” Proc SMC, 2011.

Victor Zappi and Andrew McPherson, “The D-Box: How to Rething a Digital Musical Instrument,” in Proceesings of the 21st International Symposium on Electronic Art, 2015.

A. McPherson and V. Zappi, “Exposing the scaffolding of digital instruments with hardware-software feedback loops,” in Proceedings of the international conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression, 2015, pp. 162–167.

V. Zappi and A. McPherson, “Dimensionality and Appropriation in Digital Musical Instrument Design.,” in NIME, 2014, pp. 455–460.

Projects Inspired by This Topic

Circuit Bent SNES
Circuit Bent Musical Instruments
Symbiotic SNES
Voltge Slammer