A Sound Installation between the Notre-Dame Cathedral and the Dachstein Ice Caves.
A project of the European Capital of Culture Bad Ischl Salzkammergut 2024
In 2019, Notre-Dame, the “soul of Paris” and a symbol of European culture, burns down. The bells are spared, but fall silent for years. They quietly “listen” to the hustle and bustle of the city and the sounds of the construction site—until they ring out again in 2024 to mark the reopening of the cathedral.
US sound artist Bill Fontana makes the bells audible using vibration sensors, transmitting the sounds into the ice caves of the Dachstein mountains and mirroring them with the sounds of the melting glacier to create an unusual duet. An impressive artistic statement on climate change and the fragility of culture. This site-specific duet forms the basis for a “sound bridge” that will be transmitted to exhibition venues in Europe and beyond. The world premiere of Silent Echoes: Dachstein takes place on September 3rd in the Dachstein Ice Caves in Obertraun. As part of the Ars Electronica Festival, the sound installation will be broadcast to St. Mary’s Cathedral in Linz.
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Photo: Luca BagnoliBill Fontana
US
Bill Fontana is an American sound artist who studied philosophy at John Carroll University and the New School in New York City and music at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Bill Fontana has been using sound as a sculptural medium since the late 1960s and has called his works sound sculptures since 1976. Metropolis Cologne, Metropolis Stockholm and Satellite Earbridge/Soundbridge Cologne San Francisco are sound portraits of major cities produced by WDR. He has created over 50 sound sculptures and 20 radio sculptures, some of them intercontinental. Bill Fontana’s sound sculptures have been installed in many places: New York, San Francisco, Hawaii, Alaska, Berlin, Cologne, Paris, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Thailand, Australia and Japan. Since the 1990s, Fontana has been using airborne sound transducers (microphones), liquid sound transducers (hydrophones) and acceleration sensors for his works.
Credits
A project of the European Capital of Culture Bad Ischl Salzkammergut 2024 in cooperation with: IRCAM, OÖ KulturEXPO Anton Bruckner 2024, Ars Electronica Festival, Goiserer Musiktage, Kunstradio Ö1, MuseumsQuartier Vienna, Kunsthaus Graz. Thanks to: OÖ Seilbahnholding GmbH, Planai-Hochwurzen Bahnen GmbH. With the support of: Institut français d’Autriche and Office of the Upper Austrian Provincial Government—Department of Environmental Protection.
Presented in the context of the More-than-Planet project. More-than-Planet is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.
