The fire at Notre Dame on April 15, 2019 via Getty Images



When part of the Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral caught fire on April 15, 2019, people across the globe were understandably shocked. The aftermath was devastating – not only were the roof and spire totally destroyed, but the vaulted ceilings and several windows sustained extensive damage, as well.


A fundraising campaign that was quickly launched managed to raise over €1 billion in a matter of days. Unfortunately, experts estimated that it would take at least two decades before the cathedral would be restored to its former glory.



STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP via Getty Images



The past two years have seen restoration efforts continuing, although they’ve been hampered by the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns in France. However, this slow path to healing has been a source of inspiration for many artists, including Bill Fontana.


A renowned sound artist from the San Francisco Bay Area, Fontana’s work has been displayed in museums like the Tate Modern in London, the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, and the Whitney in New York City. In 2013, he even collaborated with CERN, the world’s leading arts and science program that seeks to bridge the gap between artists and physicists.


Artist Bill Fontana with the clapper for the largest and oldest of Notre Dame’s ten bells, Emmanuel Courtesy of the artist  via The Art Newspaper images


Fontana is best known for revealing hidden sounds from unexpected locations. For instance, his “Acoustical Visions of the Golden Gate Bridge” was a live multimedia portrait that captured six months’ worth of audio and video footage using a microphone affixed to the iconic landmark. Meanwhile, “Desert Soundings” explored the unique voice of the sand dunes outside of Abu Dhabi.


This year, Fontana has taken on his biggest project yet – bringing to life the sounds of Paris, France through the Notre Dame Cathedral, which has remained largely silent for the past two years.


To accomplish his contemporary art project, Fontana plans to record the sounds “heard” by the medieval church through its ten massive bells. Titled “Silent Echoes Notre Dame,” this audio will then be live-streamed to audiences at the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (Ircam) in Paris before being taken to exhibitions in museums and cultural sites worldwide.


The Emmanuel bell is said to be the most harmonically beautiful in Europe Courtesy of Bill Fontana via The Art Newspaper images



“It’s a physical fact that these bells are actually vibrating all the time, it’s like a spirit that’s living inside of Notre Dame. It’s not dead, it’s alive,” explains Fontana in an interview. “When I had the opportunity in [July] to climb around in the bell towers, and actually physically access [the oldest and largest bell, named Emmanuel], and put my sensors on it to listen to what’s going on inside of it, I realized I was hearing a sound that probably nobody’s ever heard before that this bell is making and has been making continuously since 1681 [when it was recast].”


He adds, “It’s the voice, soul, the breath of the bell.”


Working closely with Icram, Fontana is beginning the project by installing an accelerometer device on Emmanuel, in a bid to capture the vibrations that the bell emits. He will then transform this into an audible sound that audiences will be able to hear and appreciate.



A gargoyle on the cathedral watches over Paris via The Art Newspaper images



Reaching out to the French authorities to gain access to Emmanuel and the rest of the bells hasn’t been easy, though. “It was a game of chess,” Fontana says. “And there were many days when there was a voice inside of me that said, ‘Bill, you’re crazy. You’re putting all this energy into this and you have no idea that you’re going to do it.’ It just gave me something to dream about during the pandemic because I couldn’t travel anywhere. And it was really good for my soul, in a way, to have this vision that I could think about.”


Luckily for Fontana, the physical structure of the bells remain intact, even though they haven’t tolled since the first anniversary of the fire last year. The nostalgic ring warmed the hearts of many Parisians, including Brice de Malherbe, a priest.


“My feeling today is mainly hope because the cathedral is still there,” he said. “We don’t have the blazing flames we had a year ago. Of course, the cathedral is hurt, but it seems nearly serene.”


This hope that de Malherbe, along with many other Parisians, felt upon hearing the bells toll is something Fontana hopes to evoke with “Silent Echoes Notre Dame,” which will be unveiled in June 2022.


When asked what he thinks the sound that all ten bells will emit will be like, Fontana replied “When you hear them together, reacting basically to the same ambient sound of Paris in the building of Notre Dame, my intuitions tell me that it’s going to be this beautiful shimmery harmonic curtain of these resonating vibrations. And to me, it’s a very emotional symbolic use of sound to make this public.”