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| Uberorgan
2002
Inflatables, Mylar,
Plastic Bottles, Netting,
14,000 feet of greenhouse covering,
mechanical components
300' x 75' x 40'
The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art
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This installation, made after
Pentecost, took Hawkinson's interest in sound and an ambitious
installation to another level. Uberorgan takes up the space of
a football field, in multiple rooms of the Museum. It is constructed
from inexpensive, disposable/recyclable materials, nylon net,
cardboard, plastic bottles, and various mechanical components.
The primary components are giant inflatable balloon shaped 'air
bladders' (the bagpipe was originally made from a sheep's bladder)
and tubes connected to a recorder, massive horns, and a self-styled
player unit. |
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Tim
describes it as a giant self-playing reed organ. Twelve large
reservoir balloons are collectors of pressurized air that is
computer regulated into reed-resonator assemblies from which
comes endless varieties of tones. The reeds are electronically
controlled by a player console which acts like a player piano with
a 250 foot long loop of Mylar painted with dots and dashes that
trigger light sensitive switches. Motion detectors, timers and
various switches effect the scale, key, and tone quality of the
several large horn appendages. The motion detectors respond to
the movement of the audience. What you get is an endless combination
of sound patterns. A viewer described the sounds produced by the
Uberorgan as ranging in low notes to high notes, from rumbling
flatulence to bassoon-like upper register squawks. |
Hawkinson's sculpture is an original use of architectural
space, winding tubes and surreal, biomorphic shapes winding around
inside rooms and corridors. Moving from room to room, a viewer
described the experience as like visiting different animals in
a zoo, each with its own shape and configuration of animal, each
with its own bleating sound. |
Like
with Pentecost, Hawkinson is interested in the functions of the
human body and here he has made a metaphor for the human lungs
and mechanism of breathing. Sperone Westwater has called it,
"a large, slightly insane conflation of human body and musical
instrument." Mr. Westwater goes on to write, "Uberorgan enacts
a transformation that is decidedly poetic, of air into sound
or music, or by implication, words." He explains that
Hawkinson is making what he calls post-body body art. He is exploring
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human body,
not by replicating its surface, but rather by tunneling inside.
And Hawkinson is involved with "what might
be called the diabolical sublime of contemporary art, a large
area in which expressions are extravagant, overbearing or over
the top." |
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