MNMade Festival Celebrates Electronic Instruments [VIDEO]

ST. CLOUD - The St. Cloud State University Music Department is hosting is second MNMMade Festival. The festival celebrates hand-made electronic instruments made in Minnesota. New Media Music Professor Kristian Twombly says the festival was born from the work of SCSU alumnus Troy Rogers.

Twombly says there's many people in Minnesota combining electronics and music.

We thought that there was a wonderful culture of hand-made electronics in the state of Minnesota. Quite a lot of electronics themselves are built here, as well as many creative people working with electronics, so we wanted to bring them to campus, and have them interact with our students to build little artistic creations.

As part of the festival the group of students will build a robot to perform at a concert tomorrow night at 7:30. This year the robot being built will be able to play a mono-chord. The concert will also feature robots built by Troy Rogers, as well as last year's MNMade Festival bot, Elmer Bot.

There is also a concert tonight at 7:30 is the Performing Arts Center Recital hall being performed by Tim Kaiser who is an instrument builder from Duluth.

Twombly says, "[He] has sort of adopted a 50's SyFy movie aesthetic to build his instruments. He uses all kinds of neat things to create this multi-media concert."

Both of these events are free and open to the public.

Twombly says this festival gives students an opportunity to learn about building robotic instruments from the beginning to the end.

It gives the students a really practical, and grounding in how sound is constructed from the beginning on up. This is the fundamental to music. This is how sound is produced, and we just added a little technology into the mix.