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Circuit bending is the creative customization of the circuits within electronic devices such as children's and digital synthesizers to create new musical or visual instruments and sound generators. Circuit bending is manipulating a circuit to get an output that was not intended by the manufacturer.
Emphasizing spontaneity and randomness, the techniques of circuit bending have been commonly associated with noise music, though many more conventional contemporary musicians and musical groups have been known to experiment with "bent" instruments. Circuit bending usually involves dismantling the machine and adding components such as switches and that alter the circuit.
Serge Tcherepnin, designer of the Serge modular synthesizers, discussed his early experiments in the 1950s, with the transistor radio, in which he found sensitive circuit points in those simple electronic devices and brought them out to "body contacts" on the plastic chassis. Prior to Mark's and Reed's experiments other pioneers also explored the body-contact idea, one of the earliest being Thaddeus Cahill (1897) whose telharmonium, it is reported, was also touch-sensitive.
Since 1984, Swiss duo Voice Crack created music by manipulating common electronic devices in a practice they termed "cracked everyday electronics".
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