Bill fontana: IO exhibiting at arter museum in istanbul.

March 30, 2022

Featuring a multi-screen and multi-channel installation commissioned by Arter, Bill Fontana’s Resounding Io constitutes the artist’s first solo exhibition in Turkey and a unique addition to his series Acoustical Visions which explores the image that a sound “makes” and the sound that an image “creates”.

Resounding Io is based on research surveys conducted by Fontana in Istanbul, whereby the artist made video and sound recordings, some underwater, at numerous locations along the Bosphorus, as well as in two Byzantine cisterns, namely the Theodosius Cistern and the Basilica Cistern. The relocating of the sound data Fontana collected in Istanbul with a portable recording studio – consisting of an 8-channel digital recorder, acoustic microphones, hydrophones, and accelerometers – was achieved by way of playing them via loudspeakers in the Basilica Cistern at night, which generated an incredible response from the huge void/vaults of the structure, a variety of reverberation, which in turn were recorded as the final composition through a method called “re/sounding”. The work is titled in reference to the mythological story of Io, who gave her name to the Bosphorus. Io, in Greek mythology, was regarded as the first priestess of Hera, the wife of Zeus. Zeus fell in love with Io and, to protect her from the wrath of Hera, changed her into a white heifer. Hera then sent a gadfly to torment Io, who therefore wandered all over the earth, crossed the Ionian Sea trying to flee from the gadfly, and swam the strait that was thereafter known as the Bosphorus (literally meaning Ox-Ford).

Taking full advantage of the advanced technical features of Arter’s performance space Karbon, Resounding Io creates a sensual and dynamic world, where visitors are invited to participate in an immersive experience, which will transform their perception of time and space through audio-visual compositions based on a combination of recordings from the Bosphorus and the Theodosius Cistern. Upon entering the space, visitors will be drawn to a very large wall-screen featuring the ambisonic recordings the artist made in the Theodosius Cistern, with sound being reproduced by way of a matrix of eight speakers near the wall. Additional screens are also positioned at such an angle that the imagery and the variety of sounds within the space mimicking an “exploded cube” – perfectly adapted to the architecture and acoustics of Karbon – reflect the artist’s ambition to mix sources from different locations by connecting them through water, an endlessly fascinating material to explore for both sound and image.

Resounding Io will be on view until December 2, 2022.