TITLE: Satellite Soundbridge K\u00f6ln \u2013 San Francisco
\nAUTHOR: Bill Fontana
\nYEAR: 1987
\nMEDIUM: sound<\/p>\n
DESCRIPTION: Remote performances with sound have been called \u00abtelematics\u00bb\u00a0or \u00abnetworked performance\u00bb, a slightly different practice emerged in the 1980s: \u00abtranslocation\u00bb, brought forward in the contexts of the works by the American sound artist Bill Fontana. Already the term involved shows a more intense reflection about the question of space: Whereas telematics or networked performance stress the element of linking, the prefix \u00abtrans\u00bb implies a \u00abgoing beyond\u00bb, a transgressing, so in this case going beyond locality. This is taken literally: two different spaces are involved, and the site-specifity of the chosen localities is of high importance; mostly, these projects work with specific outdoor spaces, often in urban contexts. The following example is considered to be a historical moment in media history.<\/p>\n
In summer 1987, Bill Fontana installed 18 microphones (or clusters of microphones) at different locations in San Francisco Bay, mixing and then playing back the recorded sounds in real time to a public square in front of the San Francisco Museum of Modern art (this installation was called \u00abSound Sculptures through the Golden Gate\u00bb). At the very same time, an identical though completely independent procedure was chosen in Cologne, Germany, where again 18 sound sources were mixed and projected to now another square in Cologne, the Heinrich B\u00f6ll-Platz (the installation was called \u00abMetropolis K\u00f6ln\u00bb). Thirdly the two site-specific works were linked \u2013 again in real time \u2013, so that some of the sounds from Cologne could be heard in the public square in San Franciso \u2013 and the other way round. This actually was the very first satellite bridge in the history of radio, so the composition was called \u00abSatellite Soundbridge K\u00f6ln \u2013 San Francisco\u00bb; besides the two site-specific places in San Franciso and Cologne it was the more aired by different radio stations:<\/p>\n