Bill Fontana

In a career spanning 55 years, Bill Fontana has become internationally recognized for his pioneering experiments in sound. Since the late 1960’s, he has consistently used sound as a sculptural medium to interact with and transform our perceptions of visual and architectural spaces. Applying his knowledge of composition, he draws out patterns of sound from natural and manmade worlds to create sound works that have the potential to conjure up visual imagery in the mind of the listener. He has realized sound sculptures and radio projects for institutions, museums and broadcast organizations around the world.

Many of these works create live listening networks that collect information from sources as diverse as the slowly vanishing sounds of Japan, the Bosporus River in Istanbul and it’s cisterns, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the Millennium Bridge in London, the sounds of the sea of Normandy Coast, fog horns in San Francisco, old growth forests, hydroelectric turbines, diverse urban and marine environments; the silenced bells of both Notre Dame and the Great Bell of the Vatican; the imagined sounds of the Anhalter Bahnhof in Berlin, the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula, rain forrests from 3 continents and the melting Dachstein Glacier in the Austrian Alps. Fontana’s projects have explored hybrid listening technologies using acoustic microphones, underwater sensors (hydrophones) and structural/material sensors (accelerometers). His more recent works are explorations of the relationship between image and sound, expressed through the combined mediums of audio and video.

Many of these works create live listening networks that collect information from sources as diverse as the slowly vanishing sounds of Japan, the Bosporus River in Istanbul and it’s cisterns, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the Millennium Bridge in London, the sounds of the sea of Normandy Coast, fog horns in San Francisco, old growth forests, hydroelectric turbines, diverse urban and marine environments; the silenced bells of both Notre Dame and the Great Bell of the Vatican; the imagined sounds of the Anhalter Bahnhof in Berlin, the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula, rain forrests from 3 continents and the melting Dachstein Glacier in the Austrian Alps. Fontana’s projects have explored hybrid listening technologies using acoustic microphones, underwater sensors (hydrophones) and structural/material sensors (accelerometers). His more recent works are explorations of the relationship between image and sound, expressed through the combined mediums of audio and video.