Sound as a Bell

by Drew Martin

The following is an email interview with Stephen Vitiello, whose installation A Bell for Every Minute is at the 14th Street Passage of the High Line.

Drew:
I recently walked by your bell sound installation on the High Line. I did not know it was there: I was on the way to have another look at Spencer Finch's The River That Flows Both Ways (pictured left) when I walked under your installation and one of the heavy church bell recordings went off. It was a great surprise. It changed that unremarkable space into something grand.

Do you have a favorite bell sound, or is there one that you have a particularly interesting story to?

Stephen:
There are so many of the bells that I enjoy. My favorite moment is at the beginning of the hour, when all 59 ring together. In that space, I tend to like the temple bells with their deep resonance. I recorded every bell but one. Almost every recording session had a story with it. Recording the counter bell at Good Stuff Diner was just a bit comical as I was there when people were eating and the various wait-staff watched with amusement as I pointed this very fancy microphone at their tiny counter bell. Climbing on the roof of City Hall was an experience. Going out to Coney Island to record the Dreamland Amusement Park Bell was something as it had just been dredged up after a fire from 1911 had buried it for all those years. The most personal encounter in some ways was with the nun who rang the Bell of Hope for me - this is a bell that is normally wrung for victims of 9-11. It was raining and she rang the bell for 3-minutes while a man kept an umbrella over her head. She kindly smiled and just kept ringing this big, rich sounding bell.

Drew:
The bells, rings and chimes are spaced a minute apart and cycle every hour and there is a metal sound map of NYC and all the sources. Do you have the artwork for that, which I could include here as a visual and to show the sources?

Stephen:
The sound map is a really important part of the installation but I have to say it doesn't photograph well. The subtleties of how the sign is engraved and the lighting in the space just don't show up well in pictures. I'll attach the file that was created for the engraving of the map*. It was my concept but the design was done by Kristen Becker of Mutuus Studio.

*click sound map on right to enlarge>>>

Drew:
You had one of the World Trade Center studios in 1999 for six months on 91st floor of Tower One where you recorded the sounds of the building swaying with the wind stress. All skyscrapers move with the wind: Did the sounds simply seem part of the environment, like flapping shutters in a storm, or was it a disturbing noise for you? Listening to that recording now...does it seem ominous because of its destruction or rather personal/sentimental, like the voice of a late friend or relative?

Stephen:
In general, I couldn't hear the building moving without the use of the contact microphones I had on the windows. The recording you heard was just after Hurricane Floyd broke. That was the only time I could hear the building creaking and cracking without the mics. I heard different sounds on different days. It sounds ominous to me as a sound and a sound of a big building swaying. I don't know that I associate it with 9-11. Of course, anything to do with the World Trade Center is different after what happened but I don't connect my recordings with any sort of premonition or foreshadowing.

Drew:
You were born in New York. What part of the city did you grow up in and how did that influence this project?

Stephen:
I grew up in Park Slope. I'm not sure if I have an immediate answer. I just thought of the city and the kinds of sounds that one hears. The idea of bells felt natural somehow and I realized I could trace bells to all parts of New York and to many of the cultures that I was aware of.

Drew:
You live in Richmond now. I know the city quite well because I visited my grandparents there at least once a year in the 70's and 80's and lived in it for half a year in the 1995. Richmond was considered the punk capital of the South. Additionally, GWAR (pictured left in concert) was from there. How does the music scene and the less chaotic sounds (compared to NYC) influence your work?

Stephen:
I'm not that close to the music scene in Richmond. I teach at Virginia Commonwealth University in the School of the Arts and mostly interact with art students. I did rent a room at Sound of Music for a while - it's a recording studio with a connection to Richmond's musical past, where Cracker, Sparklehorse, Labradford and others recorded but mostly before I moved here (2004). I've done some small concerts with some of the local electronic musicians (Anduin for example) but in general, I don't get out much. I'm either home with family, at school or traveling.

Drew:
It sounds like you are also a tinkerer and make some (all?) of your devices. Was that something you grew up doing or did you learn about electronics later in order to execute your creative ideas?

Stephen:
I'm really not a tinkerer. I'm fortunate enough to know people who can help me if I have an idea for a device but really tend to use fairly traditional microphones, recording equipment and store-bought processors.

Drew:
I have a broken 46 inch Sony Bravia flat screen on my basement floor (my youngest kid trashed it). Any advice about what to do with it? Would you, for example take it apart and save the speakers and other parts for projects?

Stephen:
I have no idea. If it was a broken piano, I might have more suggestions.

Drew:
You have collaborated with a number of other artists. What do you get out of the collaborations and what do you like to retain just for yourself?

Stephen:
I have collaborated a lot. In the 90s, I made a number of soundtracks for video artists and choreographers. I don't think I ever thought to save the good stuff for myself. I just worked on the projects, taking the leads from the concepts and/or visual imagery that was coming to me from the videomakers. More recently, I sometimes collaborate with visual artists as well as with other musicians. I just treat each collaboration as a unique experience to try to make something new.

Drew:
What's a project you would like to do that you have not done yet?

Stephen:
There's parts of the world I'd like to travel to - Vietnam, Alaska... I'd like to do more projects in which speakers and other sorts of readymade gear are not used or at least not visible, or where objects or structures become the speakers. I'm working on a large-scale project for MASS MoCA, transforming a building into an installation. For that one, I'm collaborating with a science fiction writer, Paul Park. I'd like to find more ways to integrate written/spoken language and narrative into my work but I haven't fully worked out how to do that yet.

Drew:
Thank you for your time.