Oral history interview with Harold Hodges, 2014

Biographical Note

Harold Hodges is a lifelong tinkerer, engineer, and musician. Raised in Dunellen, New Jersey, Hodges served as a medic in Okinawa during World War II shortly after graduating from high school. Following his service in the military, Hodges took an engineering position at Bell Telephone Laboratories where he worked in laser research and met fellow colleague and scientist Billy Klüver. Klüver encouraged collaborations between the New York art scene and innovators of technology, and he introduced Hodges to Rauschenberg. The technical creativity and skill that Hodges developed while working in the field for Bell enabled him to turn Rauschenberg's artistic visions into reality

Scope and Contents

In this interview, he describes working with Klüver to assemble Rauschenberg's Oracle, which contained five concealed radios that operated when the piece was activated. He discusses consulting for Rauschenberg's piece for 9 Evenings, Open Score. In addition to his assistance with Rauschenberg's technically complex projects, Hodges discusses his work on several of the performances included in 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering, including Deborah Hay's Solo and Öyvind Fahlström's Kisses Sweeter Than Wine. He discusses the technical issues confronted by the Bell Labs engineering team in their work on pieces or 9 Evenings, as well as more general recollections about the unique culture of Bell Laboratories that allowed for wide ranging collaborations between artists and engineers

Subjects

• Bell Labs.
• Bell Telephone Laboratories.
• Hodges, Harold--Interviews.
• Interviews.
• Oral histories (literary works)
• Performance art--United States.
• Rauschenberg, Robert, 1925-2008.
• Technology in art--Exhibitions.
• Technology in art.
• Vanderscoff, Cameron interviewer.

Access Conditions

Copyright by the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York and Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, 2016