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kottke.org posts about Kelly Heaton

The Birdsong of Printed Circuit Birds

posted by Jason Kottke   Apr 22, 2022

As part of her Circuit Garden project, artist Kelly Heaton makes birds out of electronic circuitry that can be adjusted to produce a wide variety of birdsong. Here she demonstrated with a printed circuit bluejay:

As Heaton explains, the sounds made by the birds aren't recordings...they're generated by the electronics, like a synthesizer.

My "printed circuit birds" are self-contained sound generators. The electronics are [100%] 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.

one of Kelly Heaton's printed circuit birds

(via clive thompson)