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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 
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 
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 
the nostrils and the eyes.

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So I had just this egghead, this, with 
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 
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 
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 
coming through the TV channel.

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

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

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but usually the end result 
is so abstracted that I…

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

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

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within our bodies and our bodies’ 
relationship to the external world.


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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 
walking into the studio one time,

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and there were buckets around, 
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 
dripping water in some way.

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And I didn’t want just random drips, I 
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 
sort of– it’s sort of a drumming machine.

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The signal is sent from the mechanism 
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 
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 
bump on the gear and give it a different pulse.

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

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

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The copper tape represents 
all the different possible

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permutations of three combinations of gears.


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

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

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

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So, maybe I need to go back to school 
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 
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 
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.


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You can see that the pencil 
lead was spinning around.

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And I was able to open and close 
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 
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 
maintain some of that freshness

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

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or creating a different 
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 
for pieces. I, well maybe I,

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

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I find it much freer to go right 
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 
approached by MASS MOCA

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and they wondered what I would do with a space 


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that was basically the size of a football field.

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I just came up with this 
idea of using inflatables.

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I think I was just a little nervous about 
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 
these little models in the space.

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It was going to have a real 
strong physical presence,

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

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There was a great moment when it 
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 
would have enough air pressure

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to activate the reeds to really 
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 
get, you know, a sound out of a reed.

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I used fishing net and tailored 
that around the balloons

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and I was able to further 
define and cinch them in.

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It was neat—it really was a quick way 
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 
divided into like six rooms:

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one gigantic room and slightly smaller 
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 
plays one on the Uberorgan…


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

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


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

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

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I’d made a, a mandolin and a guitar.


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The keyboard consists basically 
of these photosensitive switches.

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So by covering one of the switches, blocking 
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 
it like a piano.

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It’s all based on a score that I put 
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 
and they have strong connotations,

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and also, you know, reflect faith.