Silvia Frank, a tourist from Germany, is standing on a metal platform that snakes around the natural ice sculptures. These ice blocks are formed from water running down from Dachstein glacier above us and they, too, are gradually shrinking. “You read the newspapers, you know that the mountains are in danger and that the glacier will go,” Frank says, as the ice-clicks around us intensify. “But when you’re here and you can hear the noise of the water, it’s something else. It touches me.”
Fontana says he wanted his duet between the Notre-Dame bells and the melting glacier to “give the glacier a voice”. But can art like this really have an impact on huge issues like climate change?
“It’s a very strong statement—a live sound project with the voice of a melting glacier,” says Fontana. “You understand what you’re hearing, and it’ll have an emotional impact. I hope that doing something like this will have some positive effect on the people who can maybe solve a problem.”
We walk back down the mountain path from the ice cave, removing our beanies and coats as we return to the balmy heat of Austria’s late alpine summer.
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Bill Fontana’s sound sculpture Silent Echoes: Dachstein is being hosted in Dachstein Giant Ice Cave until November 3, 2024.
Listen to the ‘Silent Echoes’ sound sculpture here