I’m in an enormous cave in alpine Austria, listening to the sounds of a glacier dying. Or crying. Or, at least, profusely dripping.
Wrapped in a dark coat, chunky black gloves and a grey beanie, veteran American sound artist Bill Fontana is filming the cave’s craggy interiors with a smartphone attached to a selfie stick. A few tourists, also dressed for winter in late summer, are standing next to huge, bulbous ice blocks that resemble abstract sculptures.
The visitors’ eyes are closed, their chins pushed forward slightly, as they absorb the sound of dripping, clicking, whooshing and ethereal shimmer spilling from unseen speakers placed around rocky crevices.
This is the latest incarnation of Fontana’s Silent Echoes sound sculpture project, launched as part of the European Capital of Culture (ECOC) program in Austria’s rural Salzkammergut region. Having journeyed to the ice cave by cable car, we are halfway up a mountain beneath Dachstein glacier: A 2,700-meter-high mass of snow, ice and limestone that scientists say is likely to have melted almost completely by the end of this century.
