DULUTH -- Tim Kaiser started out playing the guitar, then made the illogical transition to playing the rotary phone.
He also plays the rake, the snowmobile part and the talking teddy bear. How did he make that sound? Oh, Kaiser just flipped the switch on an electric seat-adjuster from what he thinks was from a 1968 Oldsmobile.
Obsolete technology is the Duluth instrument-maker and experimental performer's playground -- Kaiser refers to these creations as "superfluous blinking lights and meaningless analog gauges" -- and they continue to attract the attention of science nerds around the world.
Kaiser had planned a two-week stint in mid-June as an artist in residence at the Science Centre of Singapore, where he would perform daily, conduct workshops and create an in-house permanent sound installation at the museum, but the trip was postponed.
That gig came from being featured in the techno DIY publication Make Magazine and on Make TV. Kaiser has been in the former twice and in the latter once.
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Kaiser has a two-room workshop in the basement of his home in Duluth's Woodland neighborhood. The bigger room is narrow, with a workbench and tools and pieces and ideas. He creates the artistic instruments, using a patchwork of found objects to make things that -- for instance -- look like a glowing CD tower and include a piece from a snowmobile, but make a low, groaning bass sound when plied with a violin bow.
Kaiser made an electronic prayer machine, which is cased in an old Apple IIe floppy drive and manipulated with electric seat-adjusters from an old car.
Other things found in instruments custom-made by Kaiser: metal boxes, an old telephone, sound chips from toy dolls, a wooden shadow box, a hybrid of a drumstick and a piano mallet.
"(I'm) keeping stuff out of the landfills," Kaiser said. "Giving it a new life and honoring the craftsmen of the past."
Kaiser sells some of the items on eBay, and sometimes he is commissioned to do something like turn an auto harp into an instrument that looks tough enough for a heavy-metal musician.
Spend enough time in Kaiser's basement, watch him flip knobs and shake cylinders, and eventually he will pause for a second and say:
"Huh. I just wrote a song. I'm just noodling around."
Kaiser, 48, is part of a niche of circuit-bending, solder-ironing, experimental music-makers that has enthusiasts all over the country and its own music festival. Among them, Kaiser is well-known.
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"If I go to an event or festival and I toss out Tim's name, they're going to know exactly who I'm talking about and what I'm talking about," said Logan Erickson, who is originally from Duluth and met Kaiser after noticing they had similar projects on eBay. "He's definitely a recognized figure in the scene of bizarre and incredibly unique instruments."
Erickson -- whose interest leans more toward electronics and can be seen on www.low-gain.com -- has a few original pieces by Kaiser, including an atomic oscillator that was born of a sound machine from Radio Shack that created effects such as helicopter and machine-gun sounds.
"It was one of those crazy '80s toys," Erickson said. "He rehoused it; he modified it significantly. It sits in my studio and doesn't get used as much as it should. But it's a Tim Kaiser piece, so I cherish it."
Kaiser played Geek Prom in mid-April, and he played for about 30 minutes at Sacred Heart Music Center on Experimental Tuesday during Homegrown Music Festival. He was at ease on stage creating ambient music that seems random, but is not.
"It's fully scored," Kaiser said. "It seems more improvisational than it is."
He does shows around the country, but Kaiser's Duluth gigs are infrequent, he said.
"I don't do country-western," Kaiser said, and laughed. "I'm a realist. This town isn't that big. I can't play that often and expect people to still come."
