Bill Fontana
Early Works
Bill Fontana investigates the physics of perception itself. Side A: tape collages where sound becomes both material and force. Side B: Wave Spiral for 5 Rin Gongs - a sidelong, 21-minute centerpiece where pure sine waves create interference patterns, frequency made sculptural. Sound spiraling through space, dissolving boundaries between observer and phenomenon.
Primal Energies (Book)
The first survey of sculptures and installations by sound-art pioneer Bill Fontana
Landscape Sculpture with Fog Horns
In 1982, Bill Fontana mounted a monumental outdoor sound installation called Landscape Sculpture with Fog Horns that would near-impossible to realize today. Live audio feeds from eight foghorns around the San Francisco Bay were routed to a central listening arena on city’s waterfront at Fort Mason. As a pioneer in the developing field of Sound Art, Fontana’s fusion of sound and sculpture was virtually unheard of, much less on the region-encompassing scale that he was working with for Landscape S…
Australian Sound Sculptures
A pioneering testament to environmental sound art of the 1970s and 1980s
Gong +
2002 release. Gong + presents three previously-unpublished compositions by Philip Corner recorded in New York City, 1974. "Metal Meditations with Listening Center," a 29-minute long piece, is a collaboration between Philip Corner and Bill Fontana. At that time Bill Fontana was very interested in the resonance properties of every object, putting his ear to everything, and sometimes recording what he called "Listening Centers," a microphone placed in a resonating space (for example a jar, or a pip…