Bill Fontana

In his site-specific “sound sculptures,” Bill Fontana translates physical and architectural elements into acoustic experiences. Influenced by his profound experience of silence during a total eclipse of the sun in 1976 (an aural effect of a visual stimulus), Fontana uses space and environment as sources of musical information. In his 2006 work Harmonic Bridge for Tate Modern, Fontana allowed visitors to “hear” the museum’s neighboring Millennium Bridge by measuring the structure’s vibration due to weather and foot and water traffic; for Sonic Shadows (2010), he translated the resonance of bridges and pipes at SFMOMA into “acoustic drawings”.