bill fontana

Notre Dame + Centre Pompidou

By placing listening devices on the surfaces of built and natural monuments, artist Bill Fontana captures uncanny natural music that reveals that these bodies are alive with sound. Fontana’s latest project amplifies the voice of Notre Dame. Since the devastating fire of 2019, the ringing of the cathedral's bells has ceased. To create his new work, Silent Echoes, Fontana attached sensors designed to detect vibrations to each of the ten bells of Notre Dame. As the bells reverberate in response to the ambient sounds of Paris the live feed is transmitted to a series of speakers at the Centre Pompidou, creating a haunting, immersive sound sculpture. In this episode, Alcôve's Alisa Carroll interviews Fontana in San Francisco, and very special guest Davia Nelson of The Kitchen Sisters meets with Fontana in Paris.

On Sunday 8th September, the Big Concert Night took place in Lentos Kunstmuseum and Brucknerhaus.

In today’s show you can hear clips from:

• the Prix ARS Electronica Collide@CERN 2013 award winner Bill Fontana’s audio art installation „Acoustic Time Travel“, which was recorded in CERN and the Large Hadron Collider.
• music from the Donaulände which accompanied an aerial display from the ARS Electronica Quadcopters.
• an interview with the jazz musician David Friedman, who was in Linz to play solo vibraphone at the world premiere of US composer Leah Muir’s „By the Reflecting Pool“ with the Bruckner Orchestra under the conductor Dennis Russell Davies.

Show by Andrew O’Brien

Music in the show (creative commons): Angus Avvicente – Pericolo, Townhouse Woods – Oh Lord, David Lohstana – Demain je change de vie, Silence is Sexy – Night Out