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works
"Harmonic Bridge" 2006
"Linear Visions" 2014
Bill FONTANA

"Harmonic Bridge" 2006


"Linear Visions" 2014

"Harmonic Bridge" is a work that focuses on the musical nature of inaudible sounds and those people generate without noticing in the structure of London's Millennium Bridge when walking on it. To highlight the musical quality of the bridge as a structure that normally vibrates according to the steps of countless pedestrians, and also depending on such aspects as load and wind, the acoustic characteristics at different parts of the bridge are made audible in real-time by way of vibration sensors.

"Linear Visions" portrays the concrete process of iron-making at the Voestalpine factory in Linz. The images of heated iron and colorfully glistening steel sheet wrapped in sprays of cooling water and rising steam, combined with impact noises and characteristic sounds detected by vibration sensors, create what may be perceived like an abstract kind of scenery.

Fontana refers to his acoustic works as "sound sculptures." Since the 1970s, he has been realizing these in projects using channels such as speakers at art museums or radio broadcast, evoking meanings and memories in the audience as they listen to various sonic elements from two geographically distant cities at the same time.

Bill FONTANA Profile
Born 1947. Composer, artist. Has been creating a variety of "sound sculptures" since the 1970s. His works projecting environmental sounds picked up at buildings and other public spaces, together with the latent meanings of the contexts in which these sounds are produced, have been realized in projects at art museums and radio stations around the world. In 2009, he was awarded a Golden Nica in the Digital Musics & Sound Art category at Ars Electronica. In 2012/13, Fontana was selected as artist-in-residence by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).

Channel ICC


Interview with the artist is available in Podcast "Channel ICC."
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Related Event


Artists' Talk
Bill FONTANA

Date: Saturday, May 23, 2015, 2:00pm -
[finished]
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