- Play with me
- I am playing with you, buddy.
- [Furby] Yeah.
(electronic noises)
- [Dani] Yeah.
- [Sam] That was good.
- [Dani] That was-
- [Sam] That was a big burp.
(laughing)
(Furby makes electronic squeaking sounds)
- And there we go.
- [Dani] Yay.
- That is the beginnings of circuit bending.
- [Dani] Futuristic doesn't have to mean new.
It can also mean using old tech in a way
that hasn't been done before.
We're here in the seaside town of Margate
to visit Sam Battle.
Sam is also known as Look Mum No Computer.
He's a musician and circuit bender who breaks apart
old toys and synths to create his own instruments.
Some of his creations include a musical flame thrower
and a Furby organ.
(Furbies chattering]
He's invited me into his studio so I can check out
some of his creations for myself.
And so we can break open a toy and circuit bend it together.
My name is Sam.
And I do a project
called Look Mum No Computer,
which is basically like repurposing things
and making silly inventions that are loosely
based around music.
And I do do some circuit bending and things.
- What is circuit bending?
- Circuit bending is basically taking machines and toys
and cheap things from the past or even nowadays,
and just making them do things
that they're not intended to do.
Usually, let's say in the 70's somebody's got a toy
in their attic, a Speak & Spell,
like those orange and yellow toys,
somebody's like, "I wonder what it's like inside there?"
They pull it apart,
they see all these circuit bits,
lick their fingers because it's only got two batteries,
you're not going to electrocute yourself,
(makes electrocution sound) no, I'm joking.
And then it makes, you find that it makes different sounds
or you can change the pitch if you touch the ground
with one finger and like a certain bit of the chip
goes, like, (makes electronic sounds),
and like you're making it do unintended things,
and it's maybe,
it began probably as something that was fun.
And then it quickly evolved into something
musicians use to make new sounds.
- [Dani] At its height, circuit bending spans
several musical genres
with artists like Trent Reznor
of Nine Inch Nails,
Beck and Danny Elfman
all using circuit-bend instruments in performances.
While it's not as popular anymore,
there is still something about Sam's creations
that's just really cool.
They're massive and insane.
- 44 circuit-bent Furbies.
All circuit bend in sequence.
Around the back, it you look really carefully
behind it,
like you'll see behind them-
- [Dani] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [Sam] They've got like,
you can see all the wires and stuff.
Have a little peak in there.
- They make a lot of noise.
- They are noisy.
- Yeah - Now you miss it.
Now you miss the sound.
- I do kind of miss the sound.
How long did it take you to build this thing?
- I built this in about two weeks of not sleeping.
However, I've been planning it for seven years.
And then, it took me about a year to find
all of the Furbies.
This is like Gordon Ramsey, but Furbies.
So what we've got to do is we've got to get it ready
by removing its protective cable tie.
Then you got to be a bit forceful.
So there we go.
- [Dani] Oh, wow, okay.
- Da, da, me scared.
(laughing)
- [Sam] So now we've got-
- I would be to.
- [Sam] Now what you've got to do,
is you get that and have a fiddle.
There's no right or wrong.
- [Furby] Larry.
(electronic noises)
And there we go.
- [Dani] Hey!
- And then what you do, is you find something like that.
- Yeah.
- And then you put some sort of thing
that would make this permanent or not.
So you snip that and you put a switch on it,
so you can choose those points.
- So you can have control over it making that noise.
- Yeah, yeah. Now you just see what it does.
Sit back and enjoy.
- [Dani] Oh, that is so cool.
(organ music playing)
- [Sam] I mean I've always,
I've circuit bent Furbies a lot from when I started
because they were quite cheap for how advanced they were
in what they did.
Apparently, ever since they came out,
there was a people that wanted to, you know,
fiddle with them and see what's inside them.
- Circuit bending really was,
it was this exploitation of this little window of time
when the scale and complexity of electronics was just right.
You know, it was complex enough to do wild stuff,
but simple enough that a little hack could make it,
you know, malfunction in cool ways.
- [Dani] That's Peter Edwards
who founded Casper Electronics.
He's a circuit bending expert,
who has built custom instruments for bands.
- The consumer electronics we have
in our lives have evolved in a way
that's completely oblivious to these hacking practices
and have moved away from hackability.
I was teaching circuit bending workshops for about 10 years
and then I stopped because eventually no one
in the workshop could hack anything.
There was nothing to bend,
because the circuits just weren't bendable anymore.
So yeah, is there a future for circuit bending?
I think from the perspective of modifying kids' toys,
I think, no, not really.
But from the perspective of people approaching, you know,
consumer products and electronics with an adventurous spirit
and finding new ways to use them, like, absolutely.
- [Dani] And Sam is one of these people,
who is pushing the medium forward
and finding new ways to make music
through hacking electronics.
(electronic music)
- What.
It's like a Daft Punk bike.
- [Sam] Yeah.
(laughs)
(synthesizer music with cymbal beat)
- Hit that, hit that.
(electronic air horn sounds)
- Every, synth bike needs an air horn.
This one's even got a head.
It's got a face.
Look, every synthesizer needs a face.
His name's Cosmo, or her.
I don't know.
Right now we're going to control it
with this solar panel.
So I'm going to patch in a solar panel into the parameter
that controls the mouth.
So I'm going to get the solar panel.
Are you ready?
How are you doing, man?
I'm okay, how are you?
(makes laughing sound)
You're so funny.
(electronic music plays)
- So to be fair with circuit bending,
it's not nearly as popular as it used to be.
There aren't a lot of people that do it as much anymore,
but you are over here doing the absolute most
that you could possibly do with circuit bending
and doing these gigantic projects.
- Yeah, yeah. I feel it's evolved a bit.
The kind of people that did circuit bending
are into building, like, modular synths now
and stuff like that.
The problem with modern toys is they're not as hackable
as the old ones.
However, you can still hack them,
but they require a different way to do it,
and it's not usually as obvious.
But I love it, and I just,
I'm trying to take it to different levels.
And like right now I'm trying to take existing projects
that I've had in my head and just make them
larger.
- But why? When everything has evolved so that you do it
on a laptop and there are digital replications
of most hardware instruments that are out there-
- Yeah.
- Why put in all the effort and time and money
into creating things like this?
- That is so tough.
I mean, the only answer I have is, why not, I guess?
I'm just deeply curious.
- Do you make music at all digitally at this point
or are you really committed to just using hardware?
- I think it would be crazy to just do hardware.
I mean, like, computers are very enabling for people.
I do a lot of work with other artists
and I tend to be stuck in front of a computer
for that stuff anyway.
I shot myself in the foot with the name, like,
Look Mum No Computer.
I can't really use a computer,
but at the same time, whatever.
I make the rules, I make the rules for my projects,
so you can't tell me if I can use a computer or not
because I made the name.
(laughs)
- Tech and music runs the gamut
from futuristic technologies,
like AI on one hand,
to circuit bending old electronics on the other.
Circuit bending has fallen out of style a little bit
but that doesn't mean that it hasn't continued
to evolve and progress.
Creativity doesn't require new technology,
but rather a new way of looking
at the things that you already have.
(light music plays)
This video is presented by Aloft Hotels:
Different. By Design.
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