French Connections
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By Alex Artaud, a sound engineer and writer living in Oakland, California. "The task of acoustic art and design is to fundamentally challenge the historical definitions of noise."— Bill Fontana Since 1974, Bill Fontana has been creating works of sound art throughout the world. An early interest in the inherent musicality of the sounds around us led to his present-day specialty in capturing and presenting acoustic sounds in entirely different locations. Examples of his many works include transporting the sounds of Niagara Falls to the outside wall of the Whitney Museum in New York, creating an "acoustic map" of the city of Venice and recently completing a project commissioned by the city of Lyon, France. "The most basic assumption I am making is that at any given moment there will be something meaningful to hear." In his essay, "Sound as Virtual Image," Fontana describes his work: "Most of my projects have been created in urban public space, where an architectural situation is used as the physical and visual focal point of sounds that are relocated to these situations. Loudspeakers are normally mounted on the exterior of a building or a monument and are used to deconstruct and transform the situation by creating a virtual transparent reality of sound. Sound sculptures placed on the exterior of a building take on the visual aspects of the architecture and the urban landscape in which they are placed and create a perceptual tension between what you see and what you hear... "The most basic assumption I am making is that at any given moment there will be something meaningful to hear. I am, in fact, assuming that music " in the sense of meaningful sound patterns " is a natural process that is going on constantly." In the summer of 1999, Fontana was invited by SYTRAL, a French government organization that oversees public art, to submit a design for a sound art installation for 18 stations along Line 1 of the Lyon Tramway. The proposal presented by Fontana, and subsequently accepted that November, combined recorded and live sounds that would be fed to each station via fiber-optic cable. The completed installation would also serve as a conduit for infrequent public service announcements but would primarily provide a soundscape of sounds collected both within and on the outskirts of the city of Lyon. Unlike Fontana's previous works, this would be a permanent, public artwork and would require durable and reliable equipment needing little service over many years. THE SOUNDSCAPE'S "CANVAS" Line 1 of the Tramway runs 8 kilometers through the older parts of the city, ending at the University of Lyon. The stations, which could best be described as sleek, upscale bus shelters, are fairly architecturally transparent, with see-through surfaces supported by relatively spare frames. "The tram station is in such an intimate environment that the sidewalk literally runs through and becomes part of the station," says Fontana. Many different people, therefore, will have a cumulative exposure to the sound artwork, whether they ride the tram every day or walk along the sidewalk regularly. "This is a special impact that I'm curious about," he adds. "It's very different than doing a similar installation for a museum." Given the intimacy of the surroundings, there were inherent risks involved. "This is a permanent work in a public space close to places where people are living and working. You have to be very careful in an artwork like this not to create a noise problem. You need to manage where the sound is going to be heard or it'll become irritating to people. So, it became a challenge to get the sound I wanted, in the zone I wanted, without being intrusive." This last issue was exacerbated by the size limitations posed by the tram station structure. The space would only permit a speaker enclosure roughly the size of a 4-inch cube. Fontana had to find a loudspeaker that would provide 90dB SPL at 3 feet and very narrow coverage so as not to present a noise risk. Finding no commercially available options that satisfied his requirements, he approached Meyer Sound with his dilemma. The result of this meeting was the creation of the new MM-4 speaker and its companion MM-4 CEU control electronics unit. For Fontana, being able to work with Meyer Sound early in the process made all the difference for this piece. "Without a loudspeaker that could articulate what I wanted acoustically in this situation, I couldn't have realized my intentions. Their speakers have a clarity and naturalness of sound." During the course of the year, Fontana visited Lyon several times to capture ambient sounds of the city and its surroundings. Traveling with a portable Sony DAT, Sanken stereo microphones, a hydrophone (to record the Rhone River), B&K vibration sensors (accelerometers) and omni-directional microphones, Fontana created a common library of sounds to be used for all stations. Among these were children playing games with metal balls, accordion players, voices in the markets, footsteps along pedestrian bridges, birds on the outskirts of town, and the nearby Rhone " all working together to create a distinct, Lyonnais sound. After his trips, Fontana returned to his home studio in California and transferred, compiled and edited material on a Macintosh G4 running Bias' Peak. He then created eighteen 90-minute mono submixes using Digidesign's ProTools. All sounds were archived at 16-bit, 48 kHz, and saved as AIFF files. To deliver the sounds to each station, Fontana selected Richmond Sound Designs' AudioBox, a digital matrix mixer that provides eight analog inputs, 16 analog outputs, plus 16 digital disk playback channels. It also includes a 9.1GB internal hard disk that provides over 24 hours of audio playback storage. Any combination of all 16 playback channels can play simultaneously from any of the stored audio. This is a very flexible system, allowing independent audio level control at each of its 256 matrix crosspoints. One can also program crossfades between different matrix configurations, as well as perform multiband EQ and audio delay. HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE Using Third Monk's ABC File Loader and ABControl software on a Macintosh G3, Fontana transferred his submixes into the AudioBox via SCSI and programmed sequences that would go to each station. Each of the 90-minute segments was programmed to loop around and/or crossfade into another 90-minute submix " all to be randomly determined and managed by the AudioBox. Integration into the mix of the five live locations was aided by Audiobox's programmable diffusion generator, which allowed Fontana to program crossfades, the velocity of transmission and the movement of the live sound mix to each of the stations. The unit's combination of programmable features (including the ability to randomly mix program segments) meant that Fontana could expect 16 unique mixes at each output. Given that there were 18 stations equipped to receive audio feeds, the only limitation was the unit's limit of 16 outputs. Even with trade-off of replicating mixes for two of the tram stations, Fontana was pleased with the unit: "The AudioBox is a very stable matrix mixer, and once programmed, you can disconnect the computer and it will run on its own without the need for an external controller." In fact, once Fontana completed programming, all the AudioBox needed was an automated command at 7 a.m. to switch it on, and another at 10 p.m. to switch it off. This was a nice way of keeping people from tampering with it, too. In the event that an announcement needed to be transmitted to the tram stations, a source signal can throw a switch that sends an internal MIDI message to the Audiobox to shift it to a different phase of the program. This allows the paging to go forward and automatically shift back and crossfade into the main program once the announcement is completed. LIVE SOUNDS For the live portion of the installation, Fontana scouted locations for sounds to be transmitted to each station. Live transmission of sound is a signature element of most of Fontana's work, and at Lyon he selected five locations to provide elements for the soundscape. Prominent are the sounds of bells from clock towers such as the Cathédrale St. Jean, an astrological clock and historical landmark; the sound of clocks from the Basilica of Fourviere; and the Carrillon de l'Hôtel de Ville, whose clock bells register an altogether different time (a humorous, serendipitous accident for a project like this). Fontana also chose the Brasserie Georges, a famous restaurant that he selected for its beautiful acoustics. Last, he placed a microphone at the Gare de Perrache, or Perrache Station. Fontana was drawn to the space's acoustic signature, with the sounds of TDG long-distance trains coming and going and periodic announcements over the intercom. Perrache Station also became a convenient location to house the AudioBox. Fontana had considered different ways of transmitting signals from each location but decided in the end that it was best to go with UHF. After reviewing options for microphones and transmitters, he chose Senn-heiser's MKH2 microphones and paired them with 250-milliwatt Sennheiser SK250 UHF transmitters, which are roughly five times as powerful as most standard UHF transmitters. To further enhance the system, he employed directional antennas and antennas with gain. Amazingly, all the live microphone locations were within a 1Km line of sight from the main SK250 receiver on top of the Perrache station " well within range for good reception. UP AND RUNNING Semaly, a French engineering firm contracted by the city of Lyon, oversees the entire operation of the Lyon Tramway. Prior to SYTRAL's selection of Fontana's proposal, Semaly, under the direction of chief engineer Pierre Geneste, had installed a configurable Siemens routing system that included room for sound, video and data cards, all multiplexed over a multimode, fiber-optic network. The flexibility of this system made the integration of Fontana's work a lot smoother. All the stations were connected to the AudioBox station (Perrache) via the Siemens routing system, and soundcards were inserted at each tramway station where equipment was present. Typically, a station should include one TOA preamplifier, a 600W dual mono power amplifier and four MM-4 loudspeakers. While Semaly provided fiber-optic lines to each location, Joël Clarenne of Roiret Enterprises in Lyon handled the installation of all the equipment under the supervision of Bill Fontana. All of the equipment was supplied by Meyer Sound distributor Best Audio. Once installed, the system levels had to be set for each station. "The only way of controlling the AudioBox was from a computer in Perrache," said Fontana. "So, I would have somebody go to each station in succession, measure the SPL and call me. It was very time consuming because there were 18 stations. And because I'm working with stored and live sounds, it's not entirely predictable what we'll get, so we have to live within a certain range." CONCLUSION Bill Fontana's installation in Lyon represents a milestone for public sound art, and perhaps for Bill Fontana's work as well. Yet some issues still persist for Fontana after several years of working in sound art. "There is a very simple paradox in my work, and I'm surprised this is still an issue after all these years. I began calling my work "sound sculptures" 25 years ago, and I always defined it as using sound as a sculptural medium " there was no object involved. Simply, I saw it as the ability of sound to invisibly transform visual space. That was a very difficult idea for someone to grasp in 1974; and today, it's still more inconceivable in the art world than I would have anticipated. People still expect objects with things that make sounds. They still want to see something connected to it. "I consider the visual element to be the space that the sound is in, and the mind space that it creates. The language of sound that I am working with is from the natural world. It's a language that makes you want to see." For more on Bill Fontana's work, visit his Web site www.resoundings.org. April, 2001 |
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