Reed Ghazala

The American artist and musician widely credited as the father of circuit bending, a practice he discovered accidentally in the 1960s when a toy amplifier short-circuited against a metal surface in a desk drawer and produced cascading oscillating tones. He built instruments and consulted for musicians including Tom Waits, Peter Gabriel, and King Crimson, and his work entered the permanent collections of MoMA, the Guggenheim, and the Whitney Museum. His 2005 book Circuit-Bending: Build Your Own Alien Instruments brought the technique to a broad audience and established it as a recognised strand of experimental instrument-making.