Man! The New York Bent Festival was off the charts.
So many super talented benders there. The highlight for me was the last set of the first night by Phil Stearns (Pixel-Form). He had these gorgeous giant breadboards with a ton of body contacts wired up to a bank of small flood lights and electrical probes taped to his arms. Whenever he connected two points on the breadboard a horrific burst of noise and light filled the room and he received some pretty severe looking shocks through the probes on his arms. It's hard to describe how or why this was such a compelling performance, but I couldn't look away. He had some terrifyingly large capacitors on board, and I intellectually knew that he must have had a zillion precautionary steps built in, but I found myself actively worrying about his safety.
Burnkit2600 also blew the doors off the joint, as did Casper Electronics and especially ErasEr, the guy behind
www.circuitbend.it, who is super talented and a lovely enthusiastic guy.
