with electronic art in the late 90s by hacking
toys such as Furby and Tickle Me Elmo, and
later developed my own circuits to depict the
flow of energy in nature. I focused on electronic
hardware (as opposed to software) because
I wanted to understand the fundamentals of
electricity as a creative medium.
My earliest sound generators were chirping
insects. I was determined to make a circuit sing
like a bird because, while insects are cool, birds
have a next level of vocal intelligence. There was
no instruction manual for animal sound circuits,
so I scavenged hobbyist schematics and tweaked
them; the Mini-Notebooks of Forrest M. Mims
(see pages 82 and 100) were a favorite resource.
My earliest “circuit birds” were freeform
electronics built into watercolor paintings
on paper. Later, I sculpted the hardware into
an electrical anatomy that’s visible inside of
transparent birds. In 2019, I created my first
“printed circuit bird” as a limited-edition kit called
Pretty Bird (ver.CC) and donated 120 of them to
raise money for the arts. Their popularity led to
several commissions, including my recent Circuit
Garden (2022), which showcases my electronic
menagerie in a playful landscape.
DEEP FAKE BIRDSONG
Nightjar’s earliestdirectancestor is Breadbird
(2019), which has all the same design elements,
but in handmade form. In early 2020, I asked
Johann Diedrick to use his artificially intelligent
FEATURES: Analog Birdsongs
MORE GOODIES
• KellyHeaton Studio:kellyheatonstudio.com
• Instagram and Mastodon: @kelly_heaton
• Nightjar available for purchase from Adafruit:
adafruit.com/product/5654
• Hacking Nightjar: vimeo.com/779394321
• Nightjar and Serge: vimeo.com/804078922
• Electronic naturalism: kellyheatonstudio.com/
electronic-naturalism
• Deep Fake Birdsong, 2020: kellyheatonstudio.
com/deep-fake-birdsong
• Hacking Nature’s Musicians, 2018: hackaday.
io/project/161443-hacking-natures-musicians
software,Flights of Fancy, to analyze the sound
generated by my birdsong circuit. What would
Diedrick’s algorithm think about my artificially
intelligent hardware? Would the software detect
a real bird? What species? The experiment was
earnest, but also a sort of electronic Dadaism.
Diedrick’s software matched 47 of the 122
analyzed spectrograms withAntrostomus
sericocaudatus(aka the Silky-tailed Nightjar) with
a 93% average confidence rating ... and so the
name Nightjar stuck!
ELECTRONICS MODELING LIFE
For more about the parallels between analog
electronics and life, check out William Grey
Walter’sMachina speculatrix,David Dunn’sMimus
polyglottos,and Mark W. Tilden’s BEAM robotics.
If you have other examples, please share them!
24 makezine.com
Dot-winged Ant Wren, 2018. Freeform electronic
circuits and watercolor on paper, 15"×10"×1". Created
while studying birds in Akumal, Mexico.
Breadbird, 2019. Analog electronics and mixed media
interactive sculpture for birdsong generation. Used for
the Deep Fake Birdsong experiment (2020).
M85_022-24_KellyHeaton_F1.indd 24M85_022-24_KellyHeaton_F1.indd 24 4/9/23 1:46 PM4/9/23 1:46 PM
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