Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Bill Fontana - Landscape Sculptures With Foghorns (KQED-FM, 1982)


The scope of this early piece from sound sculpture artist Bill Fontana is to create an audible map of the San Francisco Bay area. Listeners are able to hear various locations simultaneously, delayed by the distances the sound has to travel. Here is an explanation of the process, taken from the back cover-

           "In 1980, I began working with outdoor sculpture sites to explore the real time acoustic relationships existing between a sculpture site and it's surrounding landscape... Eight microphones were installed within the landscape. Then, through equalized telephone lines, the live sounds of the landscape were recreated at the sculpture site."

Different from accustomed field recordings, Landscape Sculptures allows listeners to place themselves inside their own imagined landscape. Natural and mechanical sounds slowly move in from all directions, some near, some distant and echoing. These compositions have the affect of translating topography to sound. I recommend reading along with the notes on the back cover as you listen.

3 comments:

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    Chris Gilman Medford Oregon

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  3. I'd love to to have something like this happen on Casco Bay, maybe as part of the Sacred and Profane on Peaks Island.

    ReplyDelete