Search - Joseph Bertolozzi :: Joseph Bertolozzi: Bridge Music

Joseph Bertolozzi's Bridge Music is a site-specific sound art installation created for the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Bridge (The Mid-Hudson Bridge), a suspension bridge spanning the Hudson River at Poughkeepsie, New York. The installation consists of two components: [1] audio speakers mounted at two Listening Stations on the bridge's towers that play Bertolozzi's original music on-demand at the touch of a button, and [2] an FM stereo transmission 24 hours a day on 87.9FM within the parks surrounding the bridge. To create his composition, Bertolozzi used various mallets to strike the bridge's surfaces (guard rails, spindles, girders, suspender ropes, etc.), and sampled them into a computer. The resulting sounds were categorized by location and note/sound value and then digitally linked to music notation software files. As Bertolozzi composed the music, these notation files were used to trigger the sampled sounds upon playback, turning the bridge into a virtual instrument. The music contains no other sounds than those of the bridge itself.