• Artwork

Land Buoy Bells by Stephen Vitiello

Stephen Vitiello

Pier 62 Floating Dock

On the floating dock at Pier 62, Land Buoy Bells, a site-specific, environmentally driven sound installation creates sounds and rhythms that harmonize with the ongoing life on the waterfront, including voices, natural, environmental, and industrial sounds. The work began development in 2013, when aspects of Waterfront Seattle were still in planning stages. Land Buoy Bells was inspired by the idea to create a work that is performed by the environment, allowing for random patterns and rhythms to occur based on any given moment, producing an ongoing, ever-changing composition.

Land Buoy Bells uses industrial materials – steel tank ends – and transforms them into a set of five instruments. The bell-like objects are struck at various moments as energy is stored up in an engineered device driven by the rise and fall of the waters that encompass the floating dock.