Bill Fontana
American (Cleveland, Ohio, 1947)Sound Sculpture with a Sequence of Level Crossings
In Sound Sculpture with a Sequence of Level Crossings, Bill Fontana creates an acoustical portrait of the Amtrak and Southern Pacific rail lines in Berkeley using recordings made by eight microphones positioned along the tracks.
The train sounds are composed to pass stereophonically through the museum gallery, simulating the auditory phenomena as they might be experienced at the actual site. Viewers are able to construct a spatial map of the original landscape based on the Doppler effects generated by the trains' movement to and fro.
Keywords
loudspeakers, skylights, ceilings, rooms, railroad trains, sounds
Please note that artwork locations are subject to change, and not all works are on view at all times. If you are planning a visit to SFMOMA to see a specific work of art, we suggest that you contact us in advance at collections@sfmoma.org to confirm that it will be on view.
Only a portion of SFMOMA's collection is currently online, and the information presented here is subject to revision. Please contact us at collections@sfmoma.org to verify artwork details.
This resource is for educational use and its contents may not be reproduced without permission. Please review our Terms of Use for more information.
