Composure commissions
Deadline 12 December 07 Further
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The Bigger Picture International commissions
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Sound Lines: A public Sound sculpture
by Bill Fontana
21June-20 August | Dark Neville
Street (Dark Arches), Leeds | active 7am-10pm
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Primal Soundings:
A new sound work by Bill Fontana
1 March 2004 - now | Leeds
City Art Gallery
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Lillian Schwartz:
A Beautiful Virus Inside the Machine
Touring film programme
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Midtown: Real-time public video projection by Wolfgang Staehle
28 October - 7 November 2004
| Leeds
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Sound
Lines by Bill Fontana
Commissioned by MAAP and Lumen | Presented
as part of Architecture Week 2005
21 June - 20 August | daily
7am - 10pm | free | Dark Neville Street (Dark Arches), Leeds
City Centre, LS1 4BR | Opening at Bar Home, Granary Wharf, 21 June,
6pm-9pm (RSVP: [email protected])

Internationally renowned US artist Bill Fontana will transform the
labyrinthine Dark Arches of Leeds into a live sound sculpture -Sound
Lines - for two months from 21 June 2005. Launched during
Architecture Week, a specially designed loudspeaker system will
emit the live sounds of the River Aire below and the Leeds City
train station above as Fontana orchestrates an ever-changing composition
transforming the space into an immense, brick-built acoustic instrument.
Since 1976, Fontana - originally trained in philosophy and music
- has worked in major cities from San Francisco to Kyoto, Paris
and London. In 1994 he created a sound sculpture from the Arc de
Triomphe, transposing live sounds of crashing waves off the Normandy
coast and the cry of seagulls, silencing one of Europe's busiest
traffic islands. In 2004 Big Ben received international attention
when it became a unique sound sculpture, enjoyed by parliamentarians
and passers-by.
For Sound Lines hydrophones (a device used to listen to
underwater energy) will be sunk into the course of the River Aire
as it is re-directed under the arches. The musical water sounds
will be played back through loudspeakers along Dark Neville Street.
A series of microphones installed in the vast architecture of Leeds
City train station will relay an acoustic description of trains
arriving and departing, and the sound of station announcements,
into the river arches below. And accelerometers (sensor device used
to measure or listen to acceleration within material) will be attached
directly onto buffer stops at the end of rail tracks in the station
detecting the constant sound of trains approaching and coming to
a stop.
Bill Fontana commented "The medium I work in is a kind of ugly
duckling. It does not fit in the art world and it does not fit into
music. It is on the edge of different worlds. For me, the urban
and natural environment is a living source of musical information
and I was inspired in Leeds by the River Aire which flows through
the Dark Arches and has had a defining impact on the development
of the city, on its architecture and its layout."
Sound Lines is funded through the kind support of Arts Council England
Yorkshire, Arts & Business, ISIS and Leeds City Council
Press: Click
here for press release
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