Over four decades, Bill Fontana has, in his words, “used sound as a sculptural medium to interact with and transform our perceptions of visual and architectural settings,” from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco to the desert of Abu Dhabi. By recording, mining, mixing, and amplifying the sounds of the world around us, Fontana allows us to hear them, and subsequently see them anew—broadening our understanding of our environments as they come alive in new ways. In MicroSoundings, the slatted steel structure of Dartmouth’s Life Sciences Center becomes a musical instrument that integrates and expresses the work done inside the building, the influence of the weather, the building’s mechanicals, the interactions of viewers near the structure, and the resonant properties of the structure itself.

In the spring of 2017, Fontana began recording sounds—from water baths to fish tanks—within several labs in the building, in search of rich and interesting sounds. He also visited the building’s mechanical rooms and recorded the machines that circulate the air and water and make the building operational. He then mined these sounds to create the recordings that play on the slatted steel structure, causing it to vibrate. These vibrations combine with those from the weather and pedestrians, and are captured with vibration sensors called accelerometers that play back the finished piece. The steel structure becomes a resonating musical vortex channeling the interesting acoustic energy of the Life Sciences Center.