the return of magic /  by kelly heaton

I have spent the past five months working on a sculpture that required some serious engineering on my part, a task that I managed to accomplish by hyper-focusing and pushing myself through many days at my electronics bench. Meanwhile, my lack of energy to make art with my spiritual and physical self has been injurious. A new friend thankfully reminded me that I need these other facets of myself if I am to survive. Suddenly, I regained attention for the magical objects that I keep on display above my electronics workspace. These protectors and power objects became visible to me again after a blindness that I self-inflicted with my own mental intensity. It’s amazing how a shift in consciousness can instantly remove the wool from our eyes — the most dangerous form of blindness is not an optical condition, but a compromised state of mind.

I wish that hardcore stunts of engineering were possible (for me) without a serious bias for thinking (instead of feeling), but that’s just not the case… not yet. I need more practice in order to achieve a greater virtuosity and grace, but that’s the work of a lifetime I suppose. Anyway, now, as I approach the end of my latest intellectual challenge, I’m grateful that a restoration of balance is on my horizon.

Pretty Bird ver. CC 2019 /  by kelly heaton

Here it is at last: my edition of 150 printed circuit boards and associated components, “Pretty Bird ver. CC,” 2019. This multiple was commissioned by Creative Capital for their 20th summer retreat celebration. I designed the artistic circuit using discrete hardware to generate waveforms from a 12 volt DC power supply, visible as blinking LEDs and audible through an 8 ohm speaker. Under the right lighting conditions, the sound is reminiscent of “pretty bird,” a song of the Carolia wren. There are no audio recordings or software algorithms involved in this effect — it’s entirely analog electronic. In the upper left corner of the circuit is a light-dependent resistor that affects the frequency of a negator oscillator, as I demonstrate in the video by changing the ambient light. It’s fascinating to me that a small quantity of common transistors, resistors, capacitors, and diodes can create vibrations that are so life-like. Similarity or simulacrum? The spark of life.

Pretty Bird ver.CC 2019 test run /  by kelly heaton

My first run of boards came in this week. I am pleased to report that the circuit works as intended (sings an analog electronic song). I’ll post video of that soon, but for now, some photos of the pretty board. I used gold-plated copper and solder mask to achieve a watermark effect, as you can see in some of these pictures. These boards (along with components to solder) will be given to attendees at Creative Capital’s 2019 retreat in June.

Pretty bird process /  by kelly heaton

Various images from the process to design a pretty bird printed circuit board for manufacture. April, 2019

Electronic naturalism and collective intelligence /  by kelly heaton

KHeaton_19_1_det_sm.jpg

Detail from recent experiments in 3d. Collective intelligence, AI, and Elon Musk have been on my mind lately. This image was made possible by a wealth of information and tools that are free for anyone with an Internet connection, notably Blender, Andrew Price aka “Blender Guru” videos on YouTube, and models available under the Creative Commons license (butterfly by Kirin Karpenko and LEDs by Sonny See, both available on Blendswap). Although not free, Julius Harling’s incredible Graswald also deserves mention. #creativecommonslicense

life-like bird song circuit /  by kelly heaton

This simple circuit sings like a bird, even with chirp variation! This effect is caused by various discrete non-linear components in a breadboard. I tried to build a soldered version and, while it sings, I haven’t been able to reproduce the life-like quality of this circuit (hence my theory that parasitic capacitance is at play).

In the front half of the breadboard, you see three astable multivibrators that create an irregular tempo. These are connected back to various locations in a “chirp generator” circuit (based on the classic doorbell canary design with an audio transformer).