San Antonio is a city that prides itself on appreciating the local arts; the city’s museums are havens for visitors seeking to connect with the spirit of the Southwestern adventure.
When the time came to develop an area that encompasses bridges across the San Antonio River as part of a 1.5-mile extension of the River Walk, the San Antonio River Foundation realized that sound would play a key role in capturing the essential essence of the region.
Eight artists were invited by the Foundation to work on the River Walk extension – dubbed the Museum Reach – that runs from the Municipal Auditorium past the San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA) and to the Pearl Brewery.
A stand-out sonic sculpture located along the River Walk beneath Jones Avenue Bridge near SAMA is Sonic Passage, which features the innovative work of Bill Fontana. A San Francisco-based ambient sound artist, Fontana elected to use a multi-channel sound system to project a number of unique sound sculptures that feature recordings from the local area.
“I decided to create an audio experience within three separate zones along the River Walk,” the seasoned artist explained, “based on the myriad sound of natural habitats and environments.” The soundscape combines pre-recorded sounds of local wildlife from natural habitats with live sounds captured from the river itself.
“My intention was to create a sound montage of the river for people sauntering along the River Walk,” Fontana continued. “I made a number of recordings of riverboats and local soundscapes, including river eddies and water sounds, in addition to bird sounds recorded in the Gulf of Mexico at the river’s estuary, which is very isolated in the spring and hosts a fabulous collection of birdlife. I made recordings as the estuary came alive from early morning throughout the day, sections of which I used as an evolving sound montage for the River Walk project.”
Fontana’s stand-out commissions include Spiraling Echoes, San Francisco, Speeds of Time, London, and Objective Sound, Panoramic Echoes, New York.
“This will be Fontana’s first piece in Texas and one of only a handful of permanent pieces that he has created,” said Mike Addkison, San Antonio River Foundation project director. “He’s using sequenced loudspeakers under Jones Avenue Bridge to produce a blend of continually changing, pre-recorded and live elements sampled from the headwaters of the river down to the Gulf of Mexico.
“People passing by will hear running water, birds, the turning wheel of an old mill and hundreds of other recordings of the river. In essence, what Fontana is doing is ‘washing’ people in the sounds of the San Antonio River.”
