Seen from a distance, Klaas Hübner and Andrew Schrock’s Corrugarou at first resembles a slightly surreal guard tower, its perforated metal sides slashed by large fan blades. Upon entering the structure, however, visitors find themselves within a two-story playable musical instrument. By turning the cranks in the structure’s base, visitors can set the fans in motion. Changing the speed at which the cranks are turned alters the pitch and volume of the harmonic tones that the instrument produces, as wind hums through the ridged tubes attached to the fans’ blades.

Hübner and Schrock met through New Orleans Airlift, an artist-driven initiative founded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2008. Airlift encourages collaboration between international and local artists and the community, often pairing artists and encouraging them to generate new public work. Airlift introduced Hübner and Schrock—who had both previously created work that involved fans—for Music Box (2011 – 2012), an installation of playable public art projects which allowed visitors and performers  to experiment with musical composition in an entirely new way.

The musical architecture projects begun with Music Box have since spread around the globe,from Atlanta, Georgia, to Kiev, Ukraine. Corrugarou is one of three such projects planned for North Adams, the other two of which will be located at TOURISTS on Route 2. For Corrugarou, Hübner and Schrock collaborated with Morrison Berkshire in North Adams before transporting it downtown and assembling it on-site. The structure—fashioned from discarded materials and industrial hardware—is a communal space for sonic exploration and play, where visitors are invited to create their own sonic improvisations.

Located at Tourists
915 State Road, North Adams, MA

Klaas Hübner and Andrew Schrock for Music Box, a project of New Orleans Airlift
Corrugarou, 2017
Photo: Jason Reinhold

Presented by TOURISTS | touristswelcome.com. North Adams Exchange programming was made possible by support from the Barr Foundation, The Educational Foundation of America, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and The Robert W. Wilson Charitable Trust, with in-kind support from Karen Brooks Hopkins.