Viator Viator Travel Blog

It’s been five years now that I have traveled the world in search of the secret voice of bridges. Every rumbling truck and gust of wind generates a vibration in the cables, and these sounds create a unique music, which is always present yet only heard once amplified through contact microphones.

Anzac Bridge

The idea originally came while studying sculpture at art school in Sydney in the mid-1990s. One of the lecturers for a course in public art had given us the exercise to come up with an idea for an artwork in public space which had absolutely no constraints, wasn’t limited by feasibility, practicality or any other real-world concern.

The first recording I made while the Anzac Bridge was still under construction, taking a team of radio producers and sound engineers from the ABC National Radio with me to best capture the industrial yet ethereal voice of the cables. Looking up at the new Glebe Island (Anzac) Bridge as it was being built over Blackwattle Bay on my way to art school everyday, the particular mix of public sculpture, sound art, and deconstructive theory swirling in my sleepy brain led me to wonder, in an idle moment of curiosity; how would that big harp-like structure of cables and concrete sound? Could I link together bridge cables around the world as instruments in a global symphony?Freedom of imagination is a gift not to be taken lightly. It is open to everyone equally, and in the end, your life is expanded and limited in accord with your capacity for imagination and corresponding courage.

The cables of suspension and stay-cabled bridges vibrate with unexpected sounds. I am always thrilled to hear a new bridge, as each one has a unique texture, rhythm and sonic signature. Tuning in to the sound in the cables gives voice to the spirit of each bridge, in which we hear the moans, sighs and singing of the bridge. Every structure is a new sonic adventure. On the bridge you are suspended in space, neither here nor there, lifted above the everyday world in a moment of pure presence, and the possibility of transformation. No wonder seeking bridge music has now become a lifelong quest.

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Despite the best efforts of my friends and family to convince me that a stable job and small apartment would be a more logical path, I decided to follow my dream of creating a symphony of bridges, and set out to capture and record the sounds of these urban instruments wherever I could.

My Thuan Bridge, Vietnam

The first leg of the journey took me to Vietnam, where I jumped out of a tour van to walk across the My Thuan Bridge over the steamy Mekong Delta. One of the guides came with me, and helped by banging on the steel casing of the cable when I found to my dismay that the contact microphones didn’t pick up any sound from their vibration. Having come this far, I wasn’t going to walk away, so while cursing myself for not having tested the equipment on a bridge at home before leaving, we managed to create some interesting sounds in the otherwise silent cables. This is the only bridge where I have been offered mango by the street vendors, and taken a wild ride on the back of a motorcycle, dodging trucks through crazy traffic.

Next stop Rotterdam, where the newly built Erasmus Bridge gave us a wonderful cacophony of sound through the railings and pylons… but still not much vibration in those cables. The bridge opened for a ship to pass by, and I captured the grinding mechanism inside, followed by wonderful trams rattling and bicycles squeaking past as the traffic started up.

It wasn’t until my third bridge, the Maatinkaari in Helsinki, that I actually heard anything like the sound I was hoping for in the cables, a low laser popping, similar to that first bridge. This one is far smaller than the previous two, and was built to resonate at a frequency of 1.3 Hz, to ensure a pleasant journey for pedestrians. The Finnish engineers did a great job, a drummer friend who climbed up into the cables and tapped out some rhythms set off the low pows and tremulous resonance. I started to hear a subtle range of sounds when the bridge responded to bicycles and people walking across.

Novy Most Bridge, Slovakia

The ‘Glienicke (Spy) Bridge’ in Potsdam, just outside Berlin, is where intelligence agents were exchanged between the US and Russian forces, and contains a surprisingly code-like series of clicks, squeaks and scratches through the structure. Exploring further East, I chose to record the Novy Most Bridge in Bratislava, Slovakia, based on the fantastical shape, as though a UFO had landed on top of the pylon. The cables were sadly mute, not actually being high-tensile steel which carries vibrations, but the mechanical shudder of the lift in the pylon gave the bridge a gritty industrial voice. I enjoyed the view of a 14th-century castle juxtaposed by monstrous 1960s concrete apartments on either side of the Danube, while sampling the local fizzy grape drink. The tiny stooped old man operating the lift has been replaced by hipsters taking cocktails with names like ‘Violet Sarcasm’ in the minimalist refurbishment of the bar.

The Millennium Bridge in London had only just been reopened when I arrived to take its sonic pulse, as the bridge suffered ‘synchronous lateral excitation’ on the opening day, a condition of noticeable and potentially dangerous swaying when hundreds of people fell into step walking across it. This is different to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, where the wind picked up the resonant frequency of the materials, causing the bridge to be known as Galloping Gertie, and it eventually buckled and collapsed in 1932. I could hear a high-pitched chattering in the Millennium Bridge, a sound that was uneasy and spoke, if not of collapse, at least of the tension in the structure.

Brooklyn Bridge, New York

In contrast, the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City has a gentle murmuring tone; the exposed steel is easily accessible from the pedestrian walkway. Although signs declare that it is illegal to attach anything to the bridge, no one stopped me fixing the contact microphones onto a number of cables, late one evening. The soothing burble is prophesized in Waldo Frank’s 1917 novel, The Unwelcome Man: “The bridge that reeled beyond him seemed an arbiter. It bound the city. It must know the city’s soul since it was so close to the city’s breath. In its throbbing cables there must be a message.”Artist Joseph Stella’s response to the bridge was even more heightened: “Many nights I stood on the bridge—I felt deeply moved, as if on the threshold of a new religion or in the presence of a new Divinity.”

The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco has a far more urgent sound, almost violent in the twang of cables popping and constant undertones that speak of mayhem, disorder and panic. I guess those noir films picked up on the secret voice of the bridge, casting her as a femme fatale and site of spooky visitations or dangerous power struggles. The beauty of the setting almost lets you forget that this is one of the most popular places for suicide attempts in the world, one survivor described crossing a mystical golden threshold after jumping.

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Bridge in Bangkok, under construction

An invitation arrives out of the blue from a Swedish engineer building the new mega-bridge in Bangkok, who asks me to record the cables during the construction process, and wanted to hear the bridge ‘played like Jimi Hendrix’. My intrepid companion team of documentary filmmakers climb into a tiny metal cage with me, and are suspended 200 metres above the Chao Praya River, then dropped at the top of the pylon to clamber down ladders inside the structure and record the workers who installed and tensioned the cables.

The range of sounds from the machinery to the cables stretching into place is extraordinary. I can’t wait to make more music with it!

The next step is bringing together the goodwill and networks of engineers, architects and musicians who have responded to the project and create the Global Bridge Symphony. I look forward to that moment of hearing an orchestrated concert of bridge voices, soaring through space and across the world together in global harmony.

-Jodi Rose