Hearth: Earth Hear was preceded by a circular version Hear the Art, which places the words 'heart heart heart heart' (which is also earth earth earth earth) in a circle, and then into pairs of inter-locking circles. This was first published in 1994, when two graphic designs of Hear the Art were included in Volume 4 of Tipping’s screenprinted folios The Sydney Morning.

In 1996 the single circle design was made as a permanent work 24 metres in diameter, using bricks set into the lawns of Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery, NSW. 

In 2008, Hearth, was installed at Frankston, Victoria. 

In 1997 a circular version of Hear the Art, this time made of perspex letters edged with ropelight and five metres in diameter, was installed as a temporary work for a month on the façade of Australia House in London. 

Hearth Earth Heart is a word square, an ancient form of writing which has long fascinated people with seemingly magical properties.

The most famous example is the The Enigma of Sator (also know as the Sator Rotas Square) dating from about the second century, which artist and composer Dick Higgins describes as a ‘talisman’, that is, resonant of magic power. Alex Selenitsch, in his essay ‘Translating the Sator Rotas Square’, privately published in 1980 in his book Sonnets etc, gives a one possible translation as: ‘The farmer (sower) Arepo (his name) guides with his hand (works) the plough (wheels). The religious meaning: God (sator) rules (tenet) the creation (rotas), the works of man (opera) and the fruits of the earth (arepo = plough)’. He also says that: ‘Magic squares may describe a different sort of ‘time’.