electricity

Know your parts /  by kelly heaton

For those of you who don’t recognize electronic components, this guide is for you ⚡️ My installation, “Circuit Garden,” is planted with oversized sculptures of common electronic parts used in nearly every circuit ever made. Hardware components are the media fundamentals of electrical engineering and electronic art — without which we would not have computers or software. They comprise the physical anatomy of machine intelligence. These are: capacitors (electrolytic and ceramic types), transistors, resistors, LEDs, wires, and ICs (integrated circuits, aka chips). Yes, there are other important types of hardware not included in Circuit Garden (or mentioned here), but I’ll sculpt those another time 😉 

Circuit Garden in NYC /  by kelly heaton

“Circuit Garden” by Kelly Heaton was curated by Common Ground Arts and commissioned by Arts Brookfield for Manhattan West and Brooklyn Commons. Video courtesy of Brookfield Arts and Micah Joel Productions

Circuit Garden celebrates our electronic culture and invites us to contemplate nature – specifically human nature in symbiosis with machine intelligence. Artist Kelly Heaton presents a large-scale circuit board in the form of an artificial lawn that is “planted” with plush sculptural electronic devices. The work evokes a playful garden, or a vintage circuit board that has been enlarged to human scale. Situated in the landscape of Circuit Garden, viewers will discover smaller functional circuits that mimic animal behaviors, such as birdsong and chirping crickets. As the viewer approaches the installation to investigate further, Heaton’s analog electronic designs generate these naturalistic sounds in real time.  The sonic landscape of Circuit Gardenis thus brought to life by electric vibrations of artificial origin and not recordings of real birds and crickets, as one might expect.

 STATEMENT BY KELLY HEATON: 

“Electronic technology is profoundly shaping our world. Many people are symbiotic with their smart phones and digital presence. Artificial intelligence is growing smarter, and our concept of “nature” is being radically transformed by engineering.  Electricity is the most important invention since the discovery of fire. Yet, the art of electrical engineering is not well understood or practiced by people outside of the scientific community. I would like to invite everyone—not only engineers—into a conversation about electronic culture, nature, and the rise of machine intelligence. While most artists work with digital media, I focus my creative practice on electronic hardware because circuits are the physical body without which there would be no digital media. Like a biologist studies animals, I study circuits to understand the physiology of intelligent machines. I am inspired by Nikola Tesla’s statement, “If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.” My art explores these concepts literally in the form of circuits that vibrate in naturalistic patterns. Circuit Garden pays homage to electrical oscillation, specifically to the astable multivibrator, which is my favorite method to generate life-like waveforms.”

Circuit Garden /  by kelly heaton

I am pleased to announce the premiere of “Circuit Garden.” This electronic and sculptural work will be on view February 28 through April 8, 2022 in the lobby of 5 Manhattan West (450 West 33rd Street, Hudson Yards, Manhattan) NYC. I am deeply grateful for Brookfield Arts (Brookfield Properties) and Kendra Roberts (Common Ground Arts) for her curatorial vision. Thank you for this wonderful opportunity! Thank you also to King Credie, PCBWay, and Advanced Circuits for your outstanding manufacturing of my artistic circuit boards.

https://www.manhattanwestnyc.com/events/circuit-garden-art-installation-by-kelly-heaton/

Printed Circuit Bird, 2021 /  by kelly heaton

Printed circuit bird, 2021. I created this work of electronic art to demonstrate the principles by which consciousness originates. The bird's circuitry is entirely analog electronic, which means that her song is not recorded but *generated* by adjustable vibrations in the circuit that forms her body. She is designed to vibrate when exposed to electricity, and we hear the resulting (audible) waveforms as a bird-like sound. Her circuit contains five analog electronic oscillators that are coupled together with a combination of resistors and capacitors. The vibrations of one oscillator affect the others, thus causing a degree of complexity and unpredictability that we wouldn't expect from such a simple circuit. It would be difficult to model this analog system because there are so many possible states, as I will attempt to explain below.

In the video, you see me adjusting variable resistors that affect the frequency, amplitude, and symmetry of the oscillations. The resulting changes in vibration are heard as tonal variation and patterns of sound, or "syntax" of the bird's song. In other words, we can hear the frequency, amplitude, and temporal structure of the waveform as it changes within the bird's circuit. Residual capacitance adds to the unpredictable nature of cause and effect. It is not only which knob I turn or how much, but *when* I make the adjustment relative to the state of the entire connected circuit. These are the continuous, interconnected, analog principles from which life-like behaviors arise. The late roboticist and neuroscientist William Grey Walter experimented with similar principles, notably demonstrated by his tortoise robots.
She is like us — we are electrical beings, too. The neural activity of a human brain is an aggregate of billions of oscillating neurons affecting each other to form thoughts and feelings. While each individual neuron is very simple, the complexity of the neural system is unfathomable. As Nikola Tesla said, "If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration." These physical laws are the basis of mind and our conscious universe.

Tokenized(Female Artist); /  by kelly heaton

Tokenized(Female Artist); // Etherium NFT available through opensea.io //Kelly Heaton, 2021

Female artists are getting their asses kicked in the race to profit from NFTs. A recent headline from Bloomberg.com states that the “NFT Art Market Boom Is Overwhelmingly Benefiting Male Creators. Female artists accounted for just 5% of all sales in last 21 months.”

OMG! People who identify as female need to get with the program and sell some electronic art. For that matter, female artists need to sell more art (of any kind) because we are slacking across the board.

I am female. I am an artist. I am taking action. I have tokenized myself so that you can add me to your digital art collection. Buy my token on opensea.io (NB: auction ends 11/30/21)

(Source for the quote and pie chart: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-09/nft-crypto-art-market-boom-biggest-sales-going-to-male-artists-women-lag)

From https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-09/nft-crypto-art-market-boom-biggest-sales-going-to-male-artists-women-lag

What is an NFT? /  by kelly heaton

Initialize la valise, 2021.

(sound on) What is an NFT? I've been pondering this question for awhile and decided to make a short film about our strange moment in cultural history. Considering the conceptual nature of NFTs, I consulted the ghost of Marcel Duchamp for his perspective.

Human and machine intelligence are merging, but not without a dollop of stupidity --which may ironically be the lasting signature of humankind, assuming computers cannot fathom how we fleshers can be so delightfully ludicrous.

Exploding Capacitor /  by kelly heaton

Happy Halloween! This year, I am an exploding capacitor paying homage to rapidly expanding human potential / 2021