Kelly Heaton’s Artwork Blurs The Line Between Traditional And Electronic

December 16, 2019 by Zoe Skyforest 7 Comments

Digital electronics are all well and good, but it’s hard to ignore the organic, living qualities of the analog realm. It’s these circuits that Kelly Heaton spends her time with, building artistic creations that meld the fine arts with classic analog hardware to speak to the relationship between electronics and nature. During her talk at the 2019 Hackaday Superconference, Kelly shared the story of her journey toward what she calls Electronic Naturalism, and what the future might bring.

The Pool of Reflection Loop was one of Kelly’s early electronic installation pieces.

Kelly got her start like many in the maker scene. Hers was a journey that began by taking things apart, with the original Furby being a particular inspiration. After understanding the makeup of the device, she began to experiment, leading to the creation of the Reflection Loop sculpture in 2001, with the engineering assistance of Steven Grey. Featuring 400 reprogrammed Furbys, the device was just the beginning of Kelly’s artistic experimentation. With an interest in electronics that mimicked life, Kelly then moved on to the Tickle Me Elmo. Live Pelt (2003) put 64 of the shaking Muppets into a wearable coat, that no doubt became unnerving to wear for extended periods.

Analog electronics parallel living organisms while programmable logic merely simulates life.

—Forrest Mims

Wanting to create art with a strong relationship to organic processes, Kelly focused on working with discrete components and analog circuitry. Basic building blocks such as the astable multivibrator became key tools that were used in different combinations to produce the desired effects. Through chaining several oscillators together, along with analog sequencers, circuits could be created that mimicked the sound of crickets in a backyard, or a Carolina wren singing in a tree.

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A Tree Of LEDs That Blows Out Like A Candle

December 11, 2019 by Donald Papp 14 Comments

The beautiful workmanship in [Andrew]’s LED tree is gorgeous all on its own, but of course there’s more going on than meets the eye. This LED tree can be blown out like a candle and it even playfully challenges a user to blow out all the lights at once in a single breath.

Some of you may remember the fascinating example of an LED you can blow out like a candle which had the trick of using the LED itself as a sensor. Like any diode, the voltage drop across the LED changes very slightly based on temperature. By minimizing thermal mass with surface-mount LEDs and whisker-thin wires, it was possible to detect when the LED was being blown on.

The LED tree shown here uses the same basic principle, but with a few important changes. The electronics have been redesigned and improved, and the Arduino used in the original proof of concept is ditched for stacked custom PCBs. Each board has a diameter under 100 mm in order to take advantage of the fab house’s lower cost for small boards. [Andrew] says that while the boards required a lot of time-consuming hand soldering and assembly, the payoff was that five boards rang in at barely five dollars (plus shipping) and that’s hard to beat.

Watch the tree in action in the brief video embedded below.

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Using Glow-in-the-Dark Fish Gut Bacteria To Make Art

December 7, 2019 by Sharon Lin 3 Comments

In New Orleans, a Loyola University professor has been creating original art out of glow-in-the-dark fish gut bacteria, enough to fill 1000 Petri dishes. Her first major foray into art was biomorphic abstractions, inspired by Impressionist painters, with her current work reflecting much of the abstraction of the earlier style.

The bacteria comes from the Pacific Rock Fish and glows a vibrant electric-blue. It is typically kept in a freezer and has a texture and color similar to water when it’s being used. The luminescence only lasts for 24 hours, presenting timing challenges when preparing artwork for a photoshoot, as artist [Hunter Cole] often does. With a Q-tip, [Cole] paints roses, lilies, and insects onto the Petri dishes and arranges them for surreal photography shoots. In addition to painting shapes in agar, she uses a light painting technique by filling clear water bottles with the bacteria for long-exposure shots.

[Cole] is planning on presenting her work at an art exhibit in New Orleans, along with showcasing a performance piece featuring models clad in chandelier-like costumes glowing with bioluminescent bacteria in petri dishes.

Add LEDs To Your Stained Glass

November 28, 2019 by Jenny List 20 Comments

Stained glass is an art form that goes back many centuries, with the churches and cathedrals of Europe boasting many stunning examples from the mediaeval masters of the craft. You do not however have to go to York or Chartres cathedrals to experience stained glass, for it remains a vibrant and creative discipline with many contemporary practitioners. One thing the stained glass of today has in common with that of yesteryear though is that it remains static, being composed of pieces of glass held together by metal strips. This is something that [Frank Zhao] has addressed as he has evolved a technique that allows him to incorporate LEDs into static stained glass, making for a particularly eye-catching effect.

It’s likely that we join many readers in not knowing the intricacies of making a piece of stained glass, so his is a fascinating write-up for its step-by-step run-through. His stained glass cat has pieces of glass edged with copper tape, which he then solders together. Driving the LEDs is not something that should be alien to us, but his method of using the copper-and-solder stained glass joints as conductors for them by creating strategically placed cuts is very effective. The final effect is of a homogeneous piece without the cuts being particularly visible , but with a pleasing array of lights on the cat’s tail. Those of us for whom stained glass production is new have learned something of the technique, and stained glass artists have seen their craft do something completely new.

Stained glass hasn’t featured here too often, the closest we’ve come is this striking fake stained glass Iron-Man themed panel a few years ago.

Replica Marshmello Helmet Is A Tidy Halloween Build

November 22, 2019 by Zoe Skyforest 2 Comments

As the saying goes – you don’t need a stylized, bedazzled helmet to have a successful career in EDM, but it helps. Marshmello is the latest in a long line of musicians to sport bespoke headgear, and [MikeTheSuperDad] undertook the construction of a replica for Halloween.

The build starts with a piece of concrete form tube as the base of the helmet. This is combined with 3D printed components to create a grid in which to place WS2812B LED strings. These are controlled by an Arduino Pro Mini, which is responsible for handling the animations. Further 3D printed parts are used as templates to cut out the characteristic eyes and mouth, as well as to cover the top. Plastic sheeting is then used over the top of everything to diffuse the LEDs and provide the final look, with black mesh behind the eyes and mouth making them properly stand out.

Marshmello should be lauded for creating a helmet with a distinctive visual style, while remaining easy to replicate, unlike popular Daft Punk builds of years past. Building a replica could serve as good practice before starting out on your own unique build. Video after the break.

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Add A Bit Of PCB Badge Glamour To Your Boring ID Badge

November 18, 2019 by Jenny List 6 Comments

When we talk about badges and printed circuit boards, it is usually in the context of the infinite creativity of the Badgelife scene, our community’s own art form of electronic conference badges. It’s easy to forget when homing in on those badges that there are other types of badge, and thus [Saimon]’s PCB badge holder is an entertaining deviation from our norm. His workplace requires employees to carry their credit-card-sized ID pass with them at all times, but the plastic holder that came with his had broken. So he did what any self-respecting engineer would do, and designed his own holder using PCBs.

It’s a three-way sandwich with identical front and back PCBs featuring a nice design, but the clever bit is the middle PCB. It is U-shaped to slide the card in from the side, but to retain the card it has a couple of springy milled PCB arms each with a small retaining tooth on the end. This is an ingenious solution, with just enough give to bend, but not so much as to break.

The three boards are glued together, it seems his original aim was to reflow solder them but this was not successful. The result is an attractive and functional badge holder, which if Hackaday required us to have a corporate ID you can be sure we’d be eyeing up for ourselves.

Mechanical Seven-Segment Display Mixes Art With Hacking

November 11, 2019 by Dan Maloney 28 Comments

We’re not sure what to call this one. Is it a circuit sculpture? Sort of, but it moves, so perhaps it’s a kinetic circuit sculpture. Creator [Tomohiro Tsuchita] calls it “something beautiful but totally useless,” which we find a tad harsh. But whatever you call it, we think this mechanical seven-segment display is really, really cool.

Before anyone gets to thinking that this is something like the other mechanical seven-segment displays we’ve seen lately, think again. This one is not addressable; it simply goes through the ten digits in order. So you won’t be building a clock from it, although we suppose the mechanism could be modified to allow that. Then again, looking at that drive train of laser-cut acrylic cams, maybe not. Each segment has its own cam with lobes or valleys for each segment. A cam follower lowers and raises the segments as the cams rotate on a common shaft. A full-rotation servo powers the display under the control of a Micro:bit; the microcontroller is overkill for now but will be used in version two, which will allow the speed to change in response to sensors.

Watching this display change at its stately pace is strangely soothing. We love the look of this, but then again, we’re partial to objets d’art-circuit. After all, we ran a circuit sculpture contest earlier in the year, and just wrapped up a Hack Chat dedicated to the subject.

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