“The Global Bridge Symphony” by Jodi Rose

Title:

The Global Bridge Symphony

Artist(s) and People Involved:

Artist Statement:

Anyone who has walked along a large bridge will know that bridges make sounds – what we can’t hear is the tension of the cables in the atmosphere, which create sonic vibrations across a range of frequencies. Understanding these sounds as a form of music, the artist recorded the song of her first bridge in 1995, and has been engaged with the Singing Bridges project ever since, capturing the unique voices of bridges all over the world. Rose sees each bridge as a musical instrument, and collectively the bridges she has recorded as urban temples, each one an instrument in The Global Bridge Symphony. The culmination of Singing Bridges is the proposed The Global Bridge Symphony, linking together the music of bridges internationally. The artist worked in collaboration with bridge engineers and artists in Singapore using sensor monitoring equipment to explore the technical, philosophical and musical aspects of the cable vibrations through local and global transmissions.

Other Information:

Collaborating with Ambient Intelligence Lab and Communications Laboratory. The artist would like to thank Prof. Lawrence Wong and team at NUS Ambient Intelligence Lab; Dr G H Tan (SysEng); Ms Annie Tan (Civil Engineering); Prof. Lim Siak Piang, Prof. Gerard Leng SB, Cheng Kok Seng, (Dynamics Lab); Elizabeth Taylor (MMRL); Derek Holzer, Darren Ng, Mika Meskanen, Joel Ong, Nick Wishart.

BRIDGE PERFORMANCE – MYTH
Separated forever by the Milky Way, the lovers can only be together for a single night. On the seventh night of the seventh moon, all the magpies in the world fly up into heaven to form a bridge. When the lovers meet on the magpie bridge, their tears of joy fall down from the sky.
Acknowledgements:
Niu Lang and Zhi Nü
Brian Gothong Tan http://www.briangothongtan.com/

RADIO APOREE GLOBAL BRIDGE SOUND MAPS
The bridge is a location. As such a thing, it allows a space into which earth and heaven, divinities and mortals are admitted. The space allowed by the bridge contains many places variously near or far from the bridge.
Martin Heidegger- Building, Dwelling, Thinking
Acknowledgements:
radio aporee ::: maps is a project about the exploration and reoccupation of our living spaces. Collecting audible material (recordings, sounds, spoken words) by upload and phone call, it connects them to the surface of google maps.
Idea, concept, realisation: udo noll 2006 –2008 http://aporee.org/maps/
Project space for Global Bridge Symphony on radio aporee maps
http://aporee.org/maps/projects/singingbridges

BRIDGE WEBCAM + SOUND
“As harps for the winds of heaven
My weblike cables are spun.”
Joseph B. Strauss, Chief Engineer Golden Gate Bridge (1937)
To Brooklyn Bridge
Through the bound cable strands, the arching path
Upward, veering with light, the flight of strings, —
Taut miles of shuttling moonlight syncopate
The whispered rush, telepathy of wires.
Up the index of night, granite and steel —
Transparent meshes—fleckless the gleaming staves —
Sibylline voices flicker, waveringly stream
As though a god were issue of the strings…
Hart Crane 1930
Acknowledgements:
IXI Audio http://www.ixi-software.net/
Images from Replot Bridge Webcam, Swedish Polytechnic, Finland
http://replot.syh.fi/

VIDEO/AUDIO PERFORMANCE MAL AU PIXEL, PARIS
The bridge that reeled beyond him seemed an arbiter. It bound the city. It must know the city’s soul since it was so close to the city’s breath. In its throbbing cables there must be a message. Waldo Frank 1917
The most beautiful bridge in the world.
So pure, so resolute, so regular that here, finally, steel architecture seems to laugh. Le CorbusierAcknowledgements:
Performance at Mal au Pixel Festival of Electronic Arts, Paris May 2008
YroYto (Explosive TV) with video Luka Dekleva yroyto.com
Streaming assisted and supported by laboiteblanche grandhoteldeparis.com
Bridge Instruments made by Emmanuel Rebus (Paris) and Nick Wishart (Sydney)
Emmanuel Rebus
Nick Wishart toydeath.com

BRIDGE PERFORMANCE – CONTEMPORARY
The transmission of message, of code, of signal, is volatile. We are living in the volatile transmission. All points can be connected to all other points.
Either I am submerged in signal exchange or I observe the global set of exchanges. Noise, disorder, and chaos on one side; complexity, arrangement, and distribution on the other.
Michel Serres
Acknowledgements: N.L. and Z.N., Brian Gothong Tan

For an interview with Jodi Rose about the The Global Bridge Symphony see isea2008.wordpress.com/tag/bridge-jodi-rose