Whether it was sculpture makers or engineers showing off projects, the so-called makers all were unified by artistic creation at the Mohawk Valley Mini Maker Faire on Saturday at the SUNY Polytechnic Institute.

The Maker Faire is a national event that originated in 2006 in the San Francisco Bay area. Created by Make magazine, the event has grown into a three-day feature of the “maker movement,” or a “tech-influenced DIY community.”

Eclectic and sometimes surreal, the sculptures and vendors’ projects ranged from students promising creative stories for participants in 10 minutes to an actual keyboard you could play with bananas — yes, bananas that made piano sounds with the help of a computer.

″(The Mini Maker Faire) was a big success, and we really wanted to bring it back,” said Daryl Lee, associate professor of humanities at the SUNY Poly. “It’s really a community event in the sense that the community created it.”

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