Circuit bending, and cyberspace...

So NYU ITP did a live performance last night. It kicked off w/ a girl who played a sonarized version of the Melissa virus, and the I Love You virus - which was alright, but not so much of a 'performance.' It was too conceptual to actually sound like anything cool. There was some other dude who played drums with a three pre-programmed robots: a woodblock, a tin plate, and a washboard (I think). It all played up against a MIDI, or something.

One of the highlights of the evening was two guys playing Mortal Combat with guitars - they'd pluck a note and Sub-Zero would punch or duck or whatever. Their whole performance was pretty damn well orchestrated. The guitars managed to be music while controlling the characters. They managed to get lightning to strike by strumming a particular chord. It was the dueling banjos superimposed on the dueling imaginations of hand-eye coordination...

Some guy made music with a device that picked up electromagnetic(?) signals. He would brush it up against a computer and it would buzz all weird. He put it next to his cell, made a call, and the interference was beeping out.

And what totally geeked me out was the circuit bending. From what I understand, circuit bending is when they pass a current through circuits of old electronics and play it on an amp - then they rewire and reroute all that electricity and make funny sounds. I was listening to the sound landscape, and realized that this is what the world sounds like to a circuit board.