Circuit bending is what happens when people open up electronic toys and short circuit them to make noises. “Benders” love easy-to-modify electronic toys such as Speak-N-Spell.

Some benders, like Bill Miller, above, even make entire albums of their toy’s music and provide photos and mp3s online for everyone for fellow benders to savor. He’s pictured above holding a highly-modified toy guitar.

Earlier this year a circuit bending conference was held in New York City. Many different types of “musicians” performed on everything from toy keyboards to old Radio Shack handheld video games, some playing multiple toys at once.