A Thousand Words - Brief Article

ArtForum, Sept, 2000 by Christopher Miles

Hawkinson's organ is "conducted" by a machine that uses photoelectric cells to read painted dots and dashes on a 250-foot-long roll of Mylar. The device controls a set of valves attached to twelve bags, determining the amount of air the bags squeeze through a collection of reeds, which are in turn attached to twenty-four-foot pipes. The air blowing through these pipes produces a series of droning blasts that range the twelve tones of the chromatic scale, making strange but familiar music, like an ensemble of foghorns playing variations on a theme from Swan Lake.

Uberorgan is on display until June 2001. at Mass MOCA in North Adams, Massachusetts, where it fills the museum's 18,000-square-foot Gallery 5. It took Hawkinson a little less than a year to make all the components and about three weeks to install the finished product. My final interview with him took place a few minutes before the opening on June 3. He had just replaced a bank of shorted-out photo cells and was enjoying a well-earned break from his labors.