Finding The Soul Inside Elmo

What kind of artist would skin a Tickle Me Elmo?

It would be someone who thinks items of popular culture could challenge an audience into rethinking what constitutes a living being. Someone fascinated by mechanical intelligence and how technology can fit into art. Someone with a wicked sense of humor.

That's Kelly Heaton, a Raleigh native who has gained a lot of attention in the New York art scene and now has returned to the state as an artist-in-residence at Duke through the Department of Computer Science and the Information Science+Information Studies (ISIS) program.

The conjunction between art and technology is a comfortable place for Heaton, who spent several years doing art at MIT's renowned Media Lab. In her East Campus art studio, she continues to work on projects such as "Immaterial Studio," which explores how computer-generated pixels can recreate the painterly experience.

Her other project involves Tickle Me Elmo, the doll that became part of popular culture a couple years ago. A microchip inside the doll allows the toy to respond to a child's squeeze on select tickle spots with a giggle of "Don't tickle me!"

Two weeks ago, 64 of the dolls, all purchased over E-bay, were lined up two and three deep against her studio's back wall. Above them were portraits of young girls dressed in Tickle Me Elmo costumes. Across the room was a sewing machine.

Within days, the Elmos would be skinned, and Heaton would begin turning their pelts into a fur coat. Woven into the coat will be some of Elmo's electronics, so when the pelts are touched, the coat will giggle and quiver.

The coat will be the center of a sculpture installation, tentatively set for exhibit next year at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts in New York. Plans for the exhibit also include a video documentary of the skinning, display of the Elmo "guts" in plastic bags, a yearbook of information about the young children who originally owned the Elmos and portraits of young girls from around the country whom Heaton paid to have themselves photographed at Sears in Elmo costumes.

In a statement about the work, Heaton said, "The aesthetics of the work are multi-layered: the exterior is fashionable, humorous and perverse; the interior is cybernetic, biological and terroristic."

"Elmo was just not an inert stuffed toy," Heaton said in a recent interview. "He responded to his senses. The computer chip gave him that ability to process data. It has machine intelligence, and I think of him as a living being; I don't treat him as a doll.

"I want to push that boundary of what we think is a living being as much as I can. I want to see how people react when confronted with an Elmo fur. How are they going to react differently than say one made from mink?

"I'm interested in where is the soul of Elmo? Is it in the electronics? The pelt? The eyes?"

Heaton is the first artist-in-residence ever appointed by computer science, and her work here continues efforts made by computer science, ISIS and other programs to build bridges on campus between the arts and technology communities. These include last year's "Free Space" dance concert involving a dance company and the Fitzpatrick Photonics Center, and an ISIS-sponsored symposium on music, new technology and theft.

"ISIS's mission is to more fully integrate information sciences and information studies into all aspects of research and the curriculum at the university," said program director Edward Shanken.

"Kelly's already doing a lot to build the kind of bridges that ISIS is interested in," Shanken added. "Her residency is shared between ISIS and computer science. Her space in the art studio is out of the art department. She's shooting a video in the warehouse that involves David Brady and people from the Fitzpatrick Center. She's working with art students and she's working with electrical engineering students along with engineering professor Gary Ybarra. These are the kind of collaborations that ISIS was hoping to make possible."

Cathy Davidson, vice provost for interdisciplinary studies, said this kind of approach is appealing to students. She notes that two first-year students turned down MIT, Stanford and other top technology schools to come to Duke because of the unusual perspectives on technology, arts and the humanities that programs such as ISIS and others allow.

"We are trying to create a program geared to the student who is now 18 and whose entire stock of learning came from the Internet and who has an entirely different relation to the science versus art design than the old C. P. Snow 'two cultures,'" Davidson said. "Art is science and science is art in this new mediated world. Kelly Heaton exemplifies this. And we are extremely proud that she is here."

Heaton said she is happy to be at Duke, where interdisciplinary approaches are supported. In addition to her work with two engineering students who are helping her study and construct the new Elmo electronics for the coat, she's also working closely with art and art history students and has met with faculty in computer science, philosophy, physics and other departments.

"I wanted to draw on so many things for this installation, so this is a good place for me to be," Heaton said.

The Elmo coat, called "Live Pelt," is part of a larger work she calls "Bibiota."

Two of the main Bibiota pieces do for the toy Furby what Live Pelt does for Elmo. Heaton skinned 400 Furbys, turning the skins into a red and white Santa Claus fur outfit she calls "Dead Pelt." She then took the eyes, mouths and electronics from the 400 Furbys, reprogrammed the electronics, and then mounted the eyes and mouths on a wall she called "Reflection Loop." As people walked by the wall, the Furbys detected the motion and their eyes and mouths would start to open and shut.

When Reflection Loop was shown in a New York gallery, it received praise from The New York Times and leading art magazines. But Heaton said she suspects it will take time for her interest in our relationship to technology and our concepts of what constitutes life and intelligence to shine through.

"I think I have a pretty dry sense of humor, but I don't just want to be seen as witty or clever to the neglect of issues underneath," she said. "For people to consider art these days, you have to have an element that grabs you. So I can do that. I can use contemporary culture in fresh, exciting ways, but that's not why I make art. I make art for the other underneath issues."