Suspended Sound Line

History of the work

A footbridge links the main building of the gibb vocational school at Lorrainestrasse 1 with the campus building at number 5. Step onto it and you hear sounds whose sources are nowhere to be seen. This is the “Suspended Sound Line” by the American sound artist Max Neuhaus, inaugurated in May 1999. The bridge itself was designed by the Bern architect Frank Geiser.

Neuhaus made the work on commission from the City of Bern’s public art programme (Kunst im öffentlichen Raum), whose collection it belongs to; it is accessible around the clock. According to his estate, the electronic sound sources were fitted while the bridge was being built. Neuhaus then tuned the sounds by ear to the noises that already exist at this spot. His drawing for the work describes the bridge as a sequence of adjoining sound zones.

Max Neuhaus (1939–2009) came from Beaumont, Texas, and became known in the 1960s as a percussionist for contemporary and experimental music. Over four decades he created dozens of permanent and temporary sound installations. The first permanent one lies beneath a grating on a traffic island in Times Square, New York. He had worked in Bern before: in 1989 the Kunsthalle Bern commissioned his “Time Piece Bern”, and also in 1999 he made a work for Swisscom in Worblaufen.

The main building of what was then the trade school was built from 1937 to 1939 after a 1935 competition in which eighty architects took part; the plans bear the signature of Hans Brechbühler. The city’s building inventory ranks it, together with the SUVA building, among the pioneering works of modernist architecture in Bern. It is worth crossing the bridge slowly and listening for the changes between the sound zones. On the lawn in front of the main building stands the iron sculpture “C-Figur” by Bernhard Luginbühl.

Researched and summarised by Bärn Kit. Sources: Kultur Stadt Bern, Kunst im öffentlichen Raum (offene Daten) · Max Neuhaus Estate: Suspended Sound Line, Bern 1999 · Max Neuhaus Estate: Liste der Klangwerke · Wikipedia (en): Max Neuhaus · suns.works: Max Neuhaus – Sound Drawings (Werkliste, 2022) · Bauinventar Stadt Bern: Lorrainestrasse 1/1a (Gewerbeschule) · Wikimedia Commons: Installation Suspended Sound Line (Max Neuhaus 1999)