The internationally acclaimed artist and composer Bill Fontana recently revealed site specific sound sculptures as part of the Abu Dhabi Music Festival.
The exhibition itself was held at the Emirates Palace Hotel and lasted a whole month, from the 21st of March until the 20th of April.
Having been commissioned to create two sound sculptures that would reflect the local surroundings, in addition to exhibiting additional work of his, Bill Fontana chose the Sheikh Zayed bridge and the Abu Dhabi desert itself as the main focus of his work.
Fontana explained this choice by referring to the nature of the undiscovered sounds which these polar opposites have in common.
Working together with some of the UAE capital’s young artistic talents for up to six months, he mentored and helped the young artists to create unique soundscapes that reflected powerful symbols and different sides of Abu Dhabi.
The Festival also commissioned the renowned local artist Mohammed Kazem to present his latest conceptual work, in addition to allowing the winner of the first Gulf Capital Abu Dhabi Festival Visual Arts award, Moza Obaid Al Suwaidi, to show creations that focussed on the symbol of the palm tree.
The visual installations and sound sculptures were presented using the latest audio visual technology, including the new coolux Pandoras Box Compact Player, which were provided by TechnoPro llc, the official coolux distributor in the Middle East.
A total of nine DVI Outputs had to be taken care of for the realisation of the demanding project. The Compact Players had to play out media to six Barco RLM-W8 projectors and three 50” LCD Monitors.
Each of the compact players was running independently and was able to provide smooth playback for looping QuickTime MOV files, with file sizes ranging from 70GB to 90GB each. The audio tracks were taken from each Compact Player and were then used for further sound processing.
A laptop running VNC Remote was used to remotely monitor the status of the nine Compact Players off-site.
The client was very satisfied with the over-all performance of the technical setup and the new Compact Players in particular, which delivered smooth playback 24/7, for a duration of 30 days.
TechnoPro provided the following hardware and technical support for the realisation of Bill Fontana’s “Acousitcal Visions & Desert Soundings” exhibition:
- 9 x coolux Pandoras Box Compact Player
- 6 x Barco RLM-W8 Projector
- 3 x 50” LCD Monitors
- 20 x Meyer Sound MM4 XP
- 6 x Meyer Sound UP Junior
- 12 x Meyer Sound UPM-1P
- 6 x Meyer Sound UMS- 1P
- 3 x Meyer Sound M1D
info: www.coolux.com