The song of the bridges

Installation, wooden pipes, blower, tones (2011)

In St. Petersburg, there are 13 big bridges which open and close at certain night hours to let the big ships pass.

This installation gives every bridge a certain tone that sounds when it opens or closes. The tone is produced by a big wooden (organ-) pipe, which is connected to a blower. The blower is working together with the opening and closing mechanism of the bridge.

If a ship sails through the city towards the sea, there are three different waterways. On each way, the ship has to pass eight bridges and therefore passes eight different tones. If one would be able to hear the tones successively one after the other, it would be the theme of the finale of the first act of Swanlake, written by P. Tschaikowski. But as one always hear the tones apart from each other, it will stay a rumour, a unfinished dream, that echoes in the night sky above the city.