The Hidden Life of Bridges

“The first big success of this year’s Time-Based Art Festival… one of the most impressive truly public art projects I’ve seen in Portland… the projections were gorgeous, the words often eloquent, the sounds evocative… the project really engaged the people of Portland with some of its most important public assets” – Brett Campbell, The Willamette Week

A site specific public art installation commissioned by the City of Portland (Oregon), this project used the voices and faces of the bridge workers to tell the stories about the structures that connect the city that was once known as ‘Bridgetown’. Custom sensors were attached to the deck of the Hawthorn Bridge, to detect the vibrations caused by passing traffic, and this data was used to create a soundscape in real-time. Pre-recorded interviews with the workers were then mixed into this live, generative audio environment.  Speakers were hung above the walkway so that an audience could listen to the sound while watching projections on the neighboring Morrison Bridge.  The projections showed a sound wave that was responding in real-time to the audio heard on the Hawthorn Bridge, and as the audio peaked, the sound waves opened to reveal the faces of the speaker, as well as images of the hidden interiors of the bridges.

 

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• Client: City of Portland

• Date: September 2011

• Service: Artist