Printed Circuit Bird (Bluejay), 2022
My "printed circuit birds" are self-contained sound generators. The electronics are 💯 analog: no audio recordings or software are involved. By “analog” I mean that the sound is dynamically produced by the bird’s body (circuit), like a vintage synthesizer. In this video, I adjust knobs to change resistance in the circuit, thereby altering the song quality. You can think of this like adjusting neurons in a bird’s brain to alter the impulse by which it vocalizes. I am passionate about building circuits because they demonstrate the life-like qualities of electronic hardware, which is often over-looked in favor of software. I’m not sure why we abandoned analog hardware along the road to technological advancement— digital is great for what it does, but it’s not the full spectrum of creative electronics. It would require a vast amount of hardware to build a digital computer capable to execute code for birdsong like this.