With an installation of video camera and seven DPA 4006A microphones, San Francisco artist Bill Fontana is simultaneously streaming and recording six months’ sound and video footage for a multimedia portrait of the Golden Gate Bridge. The venture marks the 75th anniversary of the iconic landmark, and builds on a similar project Fontana undertook to commemorate the bridge’s 50th anniversary.
For video streaming and capture, Fontana installed a camera at Fort Point, a historic property owned and operated by the National Park Service, located on the southern side of the Golden Gate Bridge. His project, Acoustical Visions of the Golden Gate, is part of a larger exhibition known as International Orange. Named after the distinctive shade of paint used on the bridge, the work offers alternative perspectives on the enduring landmark. The show also features works by contemporary artists, ’responding to the bridge as an icon, historic structure and conceptual inspiration’.
Fontana is using a Sound Devices 788T digital multitrack audio recorder to capture the audio delivered by the DPA Reference Standard 4006A mics – selected for their accurate sound capture and its ability to withstand San Francisco’s weather. ‘DPA microphones are world-class, so that’s the first place I go when I need to record something,’ he says. ‘One of the reasons I chose the 4006A is that it is one of the only great studio condenser microphones that can also live out on the Golden Gate Bridge for half a year.’
The versatile 4006A is the most popular of DPA’s microphones, and is favoured by broadcasters and music engineers alike for its clean, natural and precise reproduction in a variety of applications. Fontana regards the Sound Devices 788T as an ideal partner to the DPA mics for location recording. The recorder’s plug-and-play capabilities allow each of the microphones’ multi-pin connectors to be broken out into XLRs and simply plugged into the 788T. With the monitoring functions on the 788T, Fontana can pinpoint what channel he wants to listen to while still recording.
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