Creative collisions continue at CERN this summer when the internationally renowned sound artist, Bill Fontana, takes up his Collide@CERN residence for two months from June 2013. The 65 year old america artist, who studied with John Cage and is well known for turning iconic structures into sound sculptures - such as the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and shortly the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and he has exhibited in many of the great art galleries of the world, including Tate Modern,The Whitney to name but a few.

 

Bill  is  the new winner of the Prix Ars Electronica Collide@CERN.  Bill is already excited about his two month stay at CERN, following his 4 day induction visit in January to the laboratory. 

 

 

During his induction, Bill was given seminars on CERN science, tours of the laboratory and was also introduced to CERN scientists, some of whom  had volunteered to be considered as his dedicated inspiration partner. Matching the artists with the scientists is one of the most important factors in the residency, as well as the public lectures and interventions which the artist carries out in the laboratory during his stay. The last partnership between Julius von Bismarck and CERN theorist James Wells has led to an ongoing working relationship and they are creating a piece of art together.

 

 

 

After Bill's induction, by mutual consent, the cosmologist,intra European Marie Curie Fellow, who is attached to the CERN Theory group, Subodh Patil, was chosen as Bill's inspiration partner.

 

'The mutual fascination with how each think about sound was so striking when Subodh and Bill met, that it felt like an electric force-field,'says Ariane Koek, creator and Director of the Collide@CERN programme. They both share a fascination with the sounds of the universe and it is already exciting to see how their  art/science research relationship develops this year.'

 

Subodh says: "I specifically became interested in the Collide@CERN program when I heard that Bill Fontana would be the next artist in residence. I like how his sound sculptures challenge you to reexamine the spatial and temporal relationships you subconsciously form with your surroundings, confronting you with the hidden musicality in what one might take for granted, or block out as background noise." while he adds that  "Like many physicists, I have a musical side that I have indulged in to varying degrees of seriousness over the years, and I thought it would be very cool to pair up with Bill even just to see his process and the interesting gadgets he avails of (exotic contact microphones, pickups, etc) up close". Of course, Subodh also looks forward to lots of fun and free form discussions and interactions with Bill as Bill is clearly very keen on drawing inspiration from ideas and concepts in fundamental physics to inform his sculpture.

 

 

It already has had a promising start. Bill was so excited about what he encountered at CERN in his 4 days, including visiting LINAC, POPs (Cern's state of the art power generator and storage facility)  that he even created a 24 track audio piece whilst on the train to Paris from  the field recordings he made on his visit. 

 

You can follow Subodh and Bill when they start blogging their interchanges here http://www.aec.at/aeblog/category/futurelab/

 

For Collide@CERN news see here http://arts.web.cern.ch, sign up to our twitter account ArtsAtCern and our facebook account Collide@CERN.