"Impossible" Sound Art Achieved by SB-1 Sound Beam
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It's not often that a work of art relies on a specific product for its very existence — but that's arguably the case with Falling Echoes, a sound installation by renowned San Francisco-based artist Bill Fontana that premiered recently in Brooklyn, New York. "The entire project could not have happened without the Meyer Sound SB-1," claims Fontana. "There simply was no other loudspeaker of any kind that could do what I wanted." What Fontana wanted to do was to create echoing sounds inside a roofless, Civil War-era tobacco warehouse, now part of a New York State park, which sits in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. There was only one catch: Fontana would not be allowed to place any loudspeakers inside the space itself. He was told that placing any "new technology" in the space would spoil the aesthetic impact and, further, that mounting any kind of loudspeakers — no matter how well disguised — could threaten the integrity of the aging brick walls. Although the organizers of the Consuming Places exhibition, Creative Time, were eager to commission Fontana's participation, they could not budge from the tight restrictions. So, when Fontana devised a proposal based around eight Meyer Sound SB-1 Parabolic Long-Throw Sound Beams, it quickly won enthusiastic approval. "I had known for some time that the Sound Beam existed," recalls Fontana, "but I had never actually seen one or heard one. I contacted John Meyer, and he arranged a demonstration in the parking lot at Meyer Sound's Berkeley headquarters. We bounced some of my recorded sounds off nearby buildings, and I quickly realized that this was exactly what I needed." Fontana's idea was to weave a combination of eight separate sounds throughout the space by echoing them off the hard brick walls. But since he wanted to keep the sounds discrete and localized, he essentially needed to place highly directional "virtual loudspeakers" on the walls inside the space. This was a task that could be accomplished only by the Sound Beams. "To make sure it would work, we brought one Sound Beam to New York first," Fontana relates, "and John Monitto of Meyer Technical Support came along to help testing various sounds at different levels and angles." With all tests positive, Fontana proceeded with the full installation of eight SB-1s spaced out along the building's roof. Six were aimed down into the space at defined angles so that the SB-1's narrow 10-degree pattern hit exact locations — roughly 150 feet away — where 'virtual loudspeakers' were desired. Two other SB-1s were aimed to reflect downward from the surface of the Brooklyn Bridge, over 300 feet distant. The result is a constantly changing collage of sounds weaving through a spatial matrix. Most of the sounds for Falling Echoes were captured in 1983 on the occasion of the 100th birthday of the Brooklyn Bridge, and were transmitted to a sound installation at the World Trade Center plaza that year. Sounds included the phasing effects of cars passing on the old steel mesh roadway, harbor buoy bells, hydrophone recordings of the East River, and sounds from ships passing during the bridge centennial celebrations. For the current work, Fontana took the old analog recordings and remastered them digitally. Playback is from a Macintosh computer running custom show control software; the Mac is mounted safely inside the building, with a multichannel snake running up to the Sound Beams on the roof. At the August opening of his work, Fontana was amused to watch the reactions of the first visitors to the space. "At first, it's not obvious where the sound is coming from, because outside the space it is a diffuse, ambient effect. Then when you walk in, the individual sounds suddenly become very intense, but you don't see any speakers. People were looking around trying to figure out where the sounds were coming from. It was kind of magical." Now that his "impossible" work is a reality, Fontana expresses pleasure with the public reaction, and gratitude for the enabling technology. "The response from New Yorkers has been very positive, and I feel I've accomplished my artistic goals. I'm also very grateful to everybody at Meyer Sound who helped make this possible." As for the SB-1 Sound Beam, Fontana says, "I'm sure I will devise other schemes for using it in the future." September, 2002 |
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