The Bent Festival is an annual art and music festival celebrating DIY electronics, hardware hacking, and circuit bending. Each year we invite artists from across the country and around the globe to perform music with their home-made or circuit bent instruments, teach workshops to adults and children alike, create beautiful art installations and to generally come together, face to face, and showcase the state of the art in DIY electronics and circuit bending culture.

Runs Thursday May 1st to Saturday May 3rd.

Tickets:
Each concert is $10.
A Festival Pass to all events is available for $25.

Location:
Intermedia Arts
2822 Lyndale Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN, 55408

Installations (Installations are permanently on display during festival hours.):
Jason Wilhelm (Milwaukee)
Raul Gshrey (Germany)
Mike Una (Chicago)

Schedule

Concert 1 - Thu, May 01, 7:00 PM (Intermedia Arts) - $10
7:00 Bent Festival Reception / Listening Party (Lobby)
8:00 Igloo Martian (Wisconsin)
8:40 Datura 1.0 (Minneapolis)
9:20 Caly McMorrow (Minneapollis)
10:00 Brian McKenna (Amsterdam)
10:40 EraSer (Italy)
11:20 Beatrix*JAR (Minneapolis)

Workshop - Fri, May 02, 7:00 PM (Intermedia Arts) - Free - First Come First Served

7:00 Mike Una (Chicago)
Highly Liquid Workshop with Michael Una - Intermedia Arts Lobby Highly Liquid (www.highlyliquid.com) has donated 12 MSA-R MIDI-to-relay kits to Bent Minneapolis. Artist Michael Una will be showing people how to assemble them, how to apply them to control circuit bends via MIDI, and other applications like mechanical drum machines.

Concert 2 - Fri, May 02, 8:00 PM (Intermedia Arts) - $10
8:00 Ronald J. Schleper (Denver)
8:40 Life as Number Five (Wisconsin)
9:20 Talking Computron (Iowa)
10:00 Sounds Happy (Chicago)
10:40 Circuit Ben (UK)
11:20 Loud Objects (NYC)

Workshops - Sat, May 03, 11:00 AM (Intermedia Arts)

11:00 Intro to Circuit Bending Beatrix*JAR (Minneapolis) Dan Demchuk (St. Paul)
A great opportunity for kids of all ages to learn circuit bending! Bring an old battery powered electronic toy that makes noise to work on.

1:00 555 TIMER APPLICATIONS WORKSHOP with Mike Una (Chicago)
$3.00 Supply Cost / (Bring a Toy to modify). Learn how a simple 555 timer circuit can open up a world of opportunities, like pitching down unbendable toys and adding a tremolo like effect on pitch resistors. During the workshop we will show you how to create a Theremin like synth and use 555's square-wave oscillations for injecting into the data lines to create randomness and glitches.

3:00 Circuit Bending Drum Machines Ronald J. Schleper (Denver)
Class Limited to 15 Learn how to creatively modify your 1980's PCM and analog drum machines. Some of the best rhythmic noise can be had from the Yamaha RX series and DD series, Roland TR series, Alesis HR and SR series, and Kawai R-50 as well as many kids toy drums. A brief primer on digital logic and analog circuits will be offered, and detailed instructions on my personal favorites, the Yamaha RX-17 and Roland TR-505, as well as instructions for other models as needed.

3:00 Analog Sensor Devices Mike Taylor (Dekalb)
This workshop covers the basics of building and working with analog sensor devices. It will also cover the basics of physical computing by looking at some inexpensive ways to interface sensors with computers. I/O platforms will include the Arduino and CreateUSB interfaces. We will also look at software like PD, Max/MSP, Jitter, and Processing. After an overview of the basic hardware and software, the workshop will cover building basic sensors and the electronics theory for analog signal conditioning. We will look at resistive voltage dividers and direct voltage output types of sensors. I will demonstrate my 3D accelerometer ball, magnetic shaker ball, 3D light sensor, and a really easy to build ribbon controller. If time permits we will also look at some software programming for computer interfacing.

5:00 Bent BBQ
Concert 3 - Sat, May 03, 8:00 PM (Intermedia Arts) - $10
8:00 Crème De Menthia (Illinois)
8:40 Memory Selector (Minneapolis/Chicago)
9:20 Albino Ghost Monkey (Wisconsin)
10:00 Tim Kaiser (Duluth)
10:40 DJ Tendraw (London)
11:20 Dr. Rek (Japan)