Synth nerds and hackers find common ground at Common Circuits

On Friday November 14, a broad coalition of makers and musicians will kick off Common Circuits, Atlanta’s “festival for DIY synth lovers and open-source electronic art nerds.” Founded in 2019 by art educators Aaron Artrip and Maggie Kane, the two-day annual event is a fundraiser for its host venue, creative community hub The Supermarket.

Common Circuits is equal parts synthesizer-enthusiast social and technologist hackathon. Musicians, engineers and hobbyists gather in the psychedelic basement maze in Poncey Highland for a weekend of live electronic music, modular synth demos, hands-on workshops and late night conversation. This year’s focus is the concept of repair as a tool for citizen empowerment. In an age of increasing reliance on corporate-owned computing, the event organizers argue that a do-it-yourself understanding of tech provides a pathway to freedom.

“Planned obsolescence should be illegal in my opinion,” said Kane on the theme for the 2025 festival. “People should feel empowered to say ‘Hey something broke — I should know how to fix it.’” A community organizer responsible for hundreds of workshops at venues like The Bakery, Freeside and the Goat Farm, Kane sees technology as a neutral tool which is often weaponized by bad actors within capitalist systems. 

Creative education, she says, enables the would-be victims of techno-oligarchy to resist corporate control. “At the end of the day, it’s a metaphysical war,” Kane continued. “The ability for us to gather and exchange these ideas is really becoming more and more limited. It’s something I personally feel like I need to fight for.”

That’s not to say that a “right to repair” ethos can’t also be fun. Common Circuits attendees can learn to solder by making their own functional keychain-sized synthesizer from local DIYer Keith Macaulay. The take-home circuit board kits were designed with both beginner and seasoned makers in mind. As Macaulay shared in an Instagram post, “Advanced users can also take the board to the next level by hacking in optional control voltage inputs for the freq/pwm parameters, allowing for beat sequenced 8-bit debauchery!” 

Technical terms like “control voltage” and “pulse width modulation” are the small talk of synth lovers like co-organizer Artrip, who became interested in electronic music when experimenting with drum machines and groove boxes to supplement his bass playing. Eager to meet musicians working with similar gear, Artrip began attending Atlanta Synth Club meetings in 2013. “Back then, it was just a couple dudes drinking a beer and sharing a quarter inch,” he recalls. 

At one fateful gathering, Artrip won a Moog Mother 32 as a raffle prize. It would be his first modular synth — a highly customizable device that allows creative sound shaping through flexible audio signal routing — but far from his last. Newly obsessed with the gadgets, Artrip attended Moogfest in Asheville, North Carolina, in 2014, an event that opened his eyes to electronic music’s transcultural aesthetic possibilities “I realized people are coming to synthesizers from wildly different backgrounds. Synthesizers don’t care about what kind of music you like . . . because synthesizers can be used to make all sorts of sounds, they’re essentially genreless.”

Artrip’s fascination with infinitely customizable instruments paired perfectly with Kane’s brand of open-source technological activism, and, after some collaborative brainstorming, the freewheeling Common Circuits festival was born. The festival’s emphasis on wide-ranging experimentation means not every offering is high-tech. Sensory experiences for 2025 will include a traditional liquid light show by Limbic Visions and an interactive foley station where visitors can sync practical sound effects with video footage. 

These surreal extracurriculars will come as no surprise to those familiar with big tech’s countercultural roots. Kane hesitates when comparing Common Circuits to Burning Man but sees the legendary event’s laissez faire guidelines as an ethical touchstone for attendees. “You can do whatever you want as long as you respect others and share your knowledge.”

“Common Circuits can serve a wide range of people — anybody who is genuinely curious about things that they find interesting,” Artrip said. “I’m being purposely broad here because there is something for everyone at this event, whether you are a musician, an engineer, a community organizer or you just like being around music.”

Although Kane and Artrip bring different perspectives to event programming, both founders are united in Common Circuits’ central mission of supporting DIY creatives and art spaces — communities that are often expected to provide value for free. All money raised during the event is paid to performers, workers and the host venue. According to Artrip, the 2024 fest brought in over $8,400 in sales and sponsorships, and a large chunk of that went directly to The Supermarket. 

“Common Circuits has always existed as a fundraiser for a DIY venue, and The Supermarket does a really good job of providing a platform for young DIY artists to show the world what they’re capable of,” Artrip said. “It’s cool to be part of something like that.”

Common Circuits runs from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Friday, November 14, and from 11 a.m. to midnight on Saturday, November 15, at The Supermarket, 638 N. Highland Ave. NE. The Atlanta Synth Club will host the “Modular on the Spot” afterparty at Buteco, 1039 Grant St. SE, Suite C-10 , from noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday, November 16.

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Dustin Timbrook is a creative generalist working in art, film and music. He volunteers on the board of directors for Avondale Arts Alliance. Timbrook loves spending time with his family, playing with dogs and gardening.