CCAM Sound Art Series: Bill Fontana

Bill Fontana has been a pioneer of sound art since the 1970s. Using sound as a sculptural medium, he reveals hidden acoustic worlds and transforms the way we perceive the visual and architectural spaces around us. His works have been installed at SFMOMA and across the globe, from the Brooklyn Bridge and the Arc de Triomphe to London’s Millennium Bridge and Big Ben. He has also created radio sound art projects for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, NPR, KQED, the BBC, West German Broadcasting Cologne (WDR), Radio Sweden, Radio France, and Austrian State Radio.

For this event in the CCAM Sound Art Series Fontana will be presenting his work “Silent Echoes: Notre Dame.” Fontana describes this work as a sound sculpture that “makes audible the fact that the bells of Notre Dame are secretly ringing all the time.” Fontana continues: “The sound that the bells are producing is created by their harmonic response to the ambient sounds of Paris that surround Notre Dame, revealing that these bells are giant metal ears.”

CCAM Sound Art Series curator and producer Ross Wightman will collaborate with Fontana to adapt this spatialized audio visual installation to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Notre Dame fires, which occurred on April 19, 2019. The event will feature a demo of the installation, as well as an artist talk by Fontana and a discussion moderated by Wightman.

The CCAM Sound Art Series is centered around the sonic arts in its many forms. It presents a diversity of works by guest artists that investigates sound through the intersections of experimental musical performance, installation art, performance art, and beyond. In addition to live performance and public presentation of sound-based art, open discussions invite the audience to further engage with the featured artists and works.