Forum with Bill Fontana: Resonance

Grace Cathedral, San Francisco

San Francisco artist Bill Fontana is internationally recognized for his pioneering experiments in sound. Since the late 1960s, he has consistently used sound as a sculptural medium to interact with and transform our perceptions of visual and architectural spaces. Applying his knowledge of composition, he draws out patterns of sound from natural and constructed worlds to create sound works that have the potential to conjure up visual imagery in the mind of the listener. Many of Fontana's works create live listening networks that collect information from sources as diverse as the slowly vanishing sounds of Japan, the Bosporus River in Istanbul and its cisterns, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the Millennium Bridge in London, the sounds of the sea of the Normandy coast, fog horns in San Francisco, old growth forests, hydroelectric turbines, diverse urban and marine environments, the silent bells of both Notre Dame and the Great Bell of the Vatican; the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula, rain forests from three continents, and the melting Dachstein Glacier in the Austrian Alps.

As Grace Cathedral's 2026 Artist in Residence, Fontana will create a sound sculpture with our silent bells, his first bell project in the United States.

Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Fontana about his illustrious career and his fascination with resonance.

Recorded at Grace Cathedral on May 3, 2026.

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About the Guest

In a career spanning 55 years, Bill Fontana has become internationally recognized for his pioneering experiments in sound. Since the late 1960s, he has consistently used sound as a sculptural medium to interact with and transform our perceptions of visual and architectural spaces. Applying his knowledge of composition, he draws out patterns of sound from natural and constructed worlds to create sound works that have the potential to conjure up visual imagery in the mind of the listener. He has realized sound sculptures and radio projects for institutions, museums, and broadcast organizations around the world. His work has been exhibited at the Centre Pompidou in both Paris and Shanghai; the Vatican, Rome; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Arc de Triomphe, Paris; Arter, Istanbul; MAAT, Lisbon; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow; the Blanton Museum, Austin; the Museum Ludwig, Cologne; the Post Museum, Frankfurt; the Art History and Natural History Museums in Vienna; both Tate Modern and Tate Britain and the Palace of Westminster in London; the 1999 Venice Biennale, MAXXI Rome; Madison Square Park, New York; Soundscape Park, Miami Beach; Kunsthaus, Graz Austria; the National Fine Arts Museum of Taiwan; the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; the Art Gallery of NSW Sydney; the Kolumba Museum, Cologne; Ennova Art Museum, China. He has done major sound art projects for the BBC, the European Broadcast Union, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, National Public Radio, West German Radio (WDR), Swedish Radio, Radio France, and the Austrian State Radio. Many of these works create live listening networks that collect information from sources as diverse as the slowly vanishing sounds of Japan, the Bosporus River in Istanbul and its cisterns, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the Millennium Bridge in London, the sounds of the sea of Normandy Coast, fog horns in San Francisco, old growth forests, hydroelectric turbines, diverse urban and marine environments, the silenced bells of both Notre Dame and the Great Bell of the Vatican; the imagined sounds of the Anhalter Bahnhof in Berlin, the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula, rain forests from three continents, and the melting Dachstein Glacier in the Austrian Alps. Fontana's projects have explored hybrid listening technologies using acoustic microphones, underwater sensors (hydrophones), and structural/material sensors (accelerometers). His more recent works are explorations of the relationship between image and sound, expressed through the combined mediums of audio and video.

About the Moderator

The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.

About The Forum

The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum's host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. Learn more about The Forum here:

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