Wednesday, September 4, 2024, is not only the first day of the Festival, but also the 200th birthday of the Upper Austrian composer and organist Anton Bruckner. This is a fitting reason to hold this year’s festival opening in the Mariendom, where a team of artists, organists, computer scientists and physicists will not only perform Bruckner’s Perger Prelude, but have it conducted by entangled photons. Starting in the early morning hours, Bill Fontana’s Silent Echoes can be experienced in St. Mary’s Cathedral—the sound installation was created in collaboration with the European Capital of Culture Bad Ischl Salzkammergut 2024 and OÖ KulturEXPO Anton Bruckner 2024 and serves as a poignant artistic statement on the climate crisis.
Silent Echoes: Dachstein
Bill Fontana
00:00 – 04:00
In 2019, Notre-Dame, the “soul of Paris” and a symbol of European culture, burns down. The bells are spared, but remain silent for years. They silently “listen” to the bustle of the city and the sounds of the construction site. US sound artist Bill Fontana uses vibration sensors to make the bells’ harmonious response audible and transmits this sound to the ice caves of the Dachstein mountain range, where it is reflected in a duet with the sounds of the melting glacier, creating a powerful 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 throughout Europe and beyond. As part of the Ars Electronica Festival, the project of the European Capital of Culture Bad Ischl Salzkammergut and OÖ KulturEXPO Anton Bruckner 2024 will be transmitted live to the St. Mary’s Cathedral in Linz.
Languages: EN
Bio
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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
Ein Projekt der Kulturhauptstadt Europas Bad Ischl Salzkammergut 2024 in Kooperation mit: IRCAM, OÖ KulturEXPO Anton Bruckner 2024, Ars Electronica Festival, Goiserer Musiktage, Kunstradio Ö1, MuseumsQuartier Wien, Kunsthaus Graz. Dank an: OÖ Seilbahnholding GmbH, Planai-Hochwurzen Bahnen GmbH Mit Unterstützung von: Institut français d’Autriche.
Das Projekt wird im Rahmen von More-than-Planet präsentiert und von der Europäischen Union kofinanziert.
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.
