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TIM HAWKINSON: It’s something that emotes

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and it’s motorized and it is an emoter.

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I can’t make most of these faces myself.

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It’s using my face because [br]that’s readily available and

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I have exclusive rights to my face.

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It seemed I guess honest to just use my own face.

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I just took my digital camera and held it out.

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Just took a bunch of shots.

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I took it into the developer [br]and he put it on a screen

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and we Photoshopped all the features.

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We blanked out the mouth and [br]the nostrils and the eyes.

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So I had just this egghead, this, with [br]no features, just thinking that I’d…

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I’d want to start with a blank face.

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And then I’d overlay the, the features

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and the other three kind of donor photographs.

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The brain of the piece, or the driver,

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is just picking up the light and [br]dark patterns on the television

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and there are nineteen of these little suction

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cups that have little light [br]sensitive switches in them.

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So when a certain area of the screen is dark,

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it triggers these different mechanisms.

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It actually triggers a motor in the face.

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Sometimes the manipulations are very slight,

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Depending just on what’s [br]coming through the TV channel.

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When there’s a sporting event with lots of [br]activity, the face can be pretty emotional.

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I use my image or my body in a lot [br]of the work as a jumping-off point,

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but usually the end result [br]is so abstracted that I…

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I don’t really feel so [br]identified with it any longer.

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It’s not about my identity, but it’s [br]about our identity and our experiences

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within our bodies and our bodies’ [br]relationship to the external world.[br]

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Sometimes we do get rain in L.A.,

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and a lot of us aren’t really prepared for rain.

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So it was really great, just [br]walking into the studio one time,

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and there were buckets around, [br]all catching the, the drips.

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It just had a great sound in the space.

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So I was interested in using [br]dripping water in some way.

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And I didn’t want just random drips, I [br]wanted something that you could dance to.

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Something kind of choreographed-sounding.

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So I ended up making this I guess it’s [br]sort of– it’s sort of a drumming machine.

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The signal is sent from the mechanism [br]over here to, to this cable.

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To the different valves.

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And then the water is collected in these buckets.

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So I put in these little pie tins which create [br]sort of a resonator, really give a nice loud drip.

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The signal originates with these gears.

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Each gear has a little knob on it, a little bump.

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Each gear also is paired up with a switch.

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Different switches come in contact with the [br]bump on the gear and give it a different pulse.

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It’s not even electronics. [br]I don’t know what it is.

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It’s wiring, I think what it [br]is is just making circuits.

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The copper tape represents [br]all the different possible

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permutations of three combinations of gears.[br]

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Some of these pieces have become a little more [br]complex and they’re trying to do more things.

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And then it’s sent through, [br]I think this cylinder here.

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Those are the main aspects of the work that [br]end up having problems and breaking down.

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So, maybe I need to go back to school [br]or actually take a course in it.

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I was just thinking of this sort of creature

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that’s allowed to grow in [br]a zero gravity environment.

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And now it’s being hung out to dry.

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This form kind of grew out as a three-dimensional [br]kind of expansion out of some drawings

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that I was working on.

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Actually using a drill to spin a pencil around.[br]

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You can see that the pencil [br]lead was spinning around.

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And I was able to open and close [br]the diameter of the spin while

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it was in motion. And so I was able to

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create drawings that were almost kind [br]of reminiscent of intestines or worms.

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There’s a certain freshness in a drawing where

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you’re seeing something for the first time and,

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so in my work I, I tried to [br]maintain some of that freshness

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and keep shifting what it is that [br]I’m looking at to see it differently

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or creating a different [br]process of looking at something

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that gives me a new kind of interpretation.

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I don’t use preliminary drawings [br]for pieces. I, well maybe I,

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I can’t think that far in advance and really [br]visualize the piece in a finished state.

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I find it much freer to go right [br]in and start making the piece.

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I just said that I never make preliminary studies

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or anything but I did make models of balloons.

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That process involved being [br]approached by MASS MOCA

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and they wondered what I would do with a space [br]

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that was basically the size of a football field.

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I just came up with this [br]idea of using inflatables.

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I think I was just a little nervous about [br]filling fifteen thousand square feet,

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I didn’t want to get caught short handed.

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So I felt much better seeing [br]these little models in the space.

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It was going to have a real [br]strong physical presence,

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but I felt like it needed to [br]also have this audible component.

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There was a great moment when it [br]was finally up and, and playing.

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For me it was just like hearing the first horn.

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I was really concerned that we [br]would have enough air pressure

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to activate the reeds to really [br]get a good tone out of them

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but that we wouldn’t like pop any balloons.

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Something that large really does have to be under

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a tremendous amount of air pressure to [br]get, you know, a sound out of a reed.

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I used fishing net and tailored [br]that around the balloons

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and I was able to further [br]define and cinch them in.

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It was neat—it really was a quick way [br]of controlling a huge amount of volume.

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MASS MOCA was one big long kind of narrow space.

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The gallery in New York was [br]divided into like six rooms:

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one gigantic room and slightly smaller [br]rooms.

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I was afraid that the sound quality might be lost,

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but in the end I was really happy with the sound.

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Each whatever note this is just [br]plays one on the Uberorgan…[br]

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There was a time when he made folk [br]musical instruments for instance.

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He took banjo lessons and that was, he [br]was probably about 12 or something.[br]

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I’ve been interested in music [br]for most of my life I guess.

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At one point I thought maybe I [br]would be a musical instrument maker.

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I’d made a, a mandolin and a guitar.[br]

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The keyboard consists basically [br]of these photosensitive switches.

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So by covering one of the switches, blocking [br]out the light, you’d trigger one of the notes.

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So you can stop it at a blank space and play [br]it like a piano.

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It’s all based on a score that I put [br]together using lots of old church hymns

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and Sailor’s Hornpipe and Swan Lake.

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So I grew up hearing these old Protestant hymns,

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and some of them are really beautiful [br]and they have strong connotations,

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and also, you know, reflect faith.