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 pres-ent-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.

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.

 

Bill Fontana, Sound Designer for 18 stations along Line 1 of the Lyon Tramway.

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.” (See Sidebar.)

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