BE THERE
Sound Sculpture: Panoramic EchoesPresented by Madison Square Park March 21, 2007- May 1, 2007Bill Fontana
Panoramic Echoes is a sound sculpture with palpable layers of environmental sounds that will move, float and echo above the park’s predominant sonic background of traffic noise. The sculpture’s sound will emerge and fade out again and again from different rooftops, for changing durations and always returning to the natural silence of the park, which is traffic noise. In order to present this idea, a unique loudspeaker technology will be utilized: Meyer Sound’s parabolic speaker, the SB-1, or Sound Beam. Panoramic Echoes will be projected into the north end of the park from speakers located on rooftops of historic buildings around the park. The sound sculpture will interact with the live sounds of the now-silenced chimes of the Metropolitan Life Tower facing the park, once the tallest building in the world. The bells at the top of the tower, which have been silent for more than five years, will ring again as part of this sound sculpture Bill Fontana has been an innovator in sound art for more than 30 years. Last summer, Bill’s sound sculpture Harmonic Bridge in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern transformed live sounds of the Millennium Bridge into evocative art piece. Speeds of Time in 2004, also in London, was based on Big Ben’s bells. The MetLife Tower bells play the same melody as Big Ben, the Westminster Chimes, from a melody from Handel’s Messiah.
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