The Bent Festival is an annual art and music festival celebrating DIY electronics, hardware hacking, and circuit bending. Each year we have invited 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.

If you have the least bit of curiosity about electronics or electronic music, or if you've ever just wanted to rip your toys apart, this festival is for you. Each day we have had open studios with expert circuit benders and hardware hackers on hand to help you get started. We have had installation artists building circuit-bent artwork throughout the space. In addition to a full schedule of in-depth workshops, we have held nightly concerts featuring some of the best circuit benders and DIY electronics performers in the world. It is pure unadulterated fun for the whole family.

The 2008 Minneapolis Bent Festival was the fifth year of the Bent Festival, and the second year in Minneapolis, featuring more workshops, performers, and art installations than it had previously. Sponsored in part by Make Magazine (www.makezine.com), the festival continued the tradition of taking the festival on the road, from coast to coast!