HECATE16R4

Taken: 2011-02-13T13:29:16Z

Uploaded: 2011-02-13T23:29:16

NOTE: You can bid on this drawing here for charity until February 27th.

My submission to ART SHO LDN.

The theme of the show is "Magic and Logic" so I took a very different approach to this than usual.

I decided to play around with Aleister Crowley's definition of Magick as "the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with the will" which he further clarifies "ANY required change may be effected by the application of the proper kind and degree of Force in the proper manner, through the proper medium to the proper object."

Applying this definition to logic brought up immediate associates for me (having a computer engineering background) with programmable array logic (PALs). PALs are sort of a "raw material" version of logic circuits. They work by providing a number of generic AND and OR logic gates arranged with a grid that enables any and all connections between them. The points in the grid that cross and enable each connection have a small fuse built in. So, to use a PAL to implement the desired logic function, one first applies enough voltage to the pins corresponding to the right "crossroads" in the grid to burn out the fuses at those points, leaving only the connections that define the desired logic function.

Since this connection between magic and logic was so clear to me, I decided to bring PALs back into magic a bit more. So this is a 16R4 PAL (a common PAL chip) block diagram containing Hecate, the greek goddess of magic, crossroads, and gates.