hAIkuOrgan is an electroacoustic art installation that sounds out AI-influenced haikus in Morse code and spoken word from 25 rescued organ pipes from a Folkestone church. Each pipe represents a year since 2000 to create a satirical sonic rhythm for our first quarter of the century as we enter our rising AI-influenced new millennium.
During April and May 2025, I constructed the installation from parts of an old church pipe organ and converted the pipe valve operation so that they could be controlled using Ableton, via MIDI over Arduinos and transistors.
The first quarter of this century in our new millennium has seen the rise of AI and its increasing influence on social discourse. To echo that influence, I asked ChatGPT to create a haiku for each complete year of this century, from 2000 to 2024 - 25 years, a quarter of a century, to capture AI’s global understanding of each year.
Each haiku is played out on each pipe in the form of Morse code in the pitch of the corresponding pipe. Morse code was invented in the 1830s by inventor and romantic artist Samuel Morse as a way to communicate across the far-flung corners of the world in a universal language, so its use here to convey AI’s interpretation of the world’s events is apt. Morse code can be considered a forerunner to AI. Both are ways of turning human cognition into something transferable and scalable. As a romantic artist, Morse deeply valued the transfer of human emotion through artistic means and technology, rather than denying it.
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As each year's global activity influences and reflects the next, the pipes are also played sequentially, randomly and on top of each other at varying speeds to give the feeling of either harmony, cacophony or a mixture of both.
The pipe that represents 2020 has no voice. Serendipitously, it is the year that the COVID-19 virus silenced the land and sky as the world was kept inside their homes. The pipe has no voice as it was originally intended purely as a decorative pipe within a church setting; instead, I have introduced transducers to speak its haiku. Using AI, I created an English-speaking voice with a global accent to speak the haiku.
In addition to the function of the hAIkuOrgan, I have repurposed a recycled Gametrak controller, originally designed for video games, such as golf simulators, to track the movements of human hands. This enables visitors to the installation to create their own gestural performance with the organ pipes.
I have adapted the Gametrak, using Arduinos to convert the positional data into MIDI and Pure Data software to control each organ pipe note. The controller's x, y, and z coordinates influence the pitch and duration of each note.
My hAIkuOrgan is essentially a purpose-built hyperorgan. The emerging hyperorgan movement, first coined by Dr. Randall Harlow in his 2011 thesis, aimed to push organ pipe boundaries with new ways of interfacing. Harlow argues that hyperorgans hold the potential to radically expand the community of artists associated with the pipe organ and to transform organ art. (Harlow 2024)
Hyperorgans combine the traditional acoustic qualities of the pipe organ with advanced features of computer control, allowing for more nuanced dynamic control than traditional pipe organs and creating complex textures.
The Orgelpark, Amsterdam, has become a hub for pipe organ development and allows musicians to interface with the hyperorgans it houses. Orgelpark Director of Research Dr. Hans Fidom stated that “the organ is reaching out, finding new people and places, and vice versa. Sometimes that is frightening to the conventionally trained organists and organ builders, but actually it just means that the instrument expands its focus” (Vogels 2024).
Vogels, D. (2024) ‘The Hyperorgan Movement’, The American Organist, September, pp. 14–15.
