Meet Jodi Rose, self-acclaimed International Bridge Diva and initiator of the beautiful Singing Bridges project.

Jodi Rose has traveled the world since 2002, creating Singing Bridges, a conceptual sound work using the cables of bridges as musical instruments on a global scale. Recording the vibrations in the cables with contact microphones, editing and composing the sounds to create experimental music, performances, and installations has taken Jodi to festivals and events across Europe and Australia. She has dangled from the top of a crane in Bangkok to listen to the cables being ‘tuned,’ sampled cocktails in the bar of the UFO Bridge in Bratislava, been guardian of a bridge over the Danube, and traversed the globe from Helsinki to the Mekong Delta in her endless quest for bridge music. Jodi is working with engineers, architects, software developers and musicians to link the sounds of bridges around the world in the ultimate live networked ‘Global Bridge Symphony’, and writing a memoir of this quixotic philosophical journey from on her award winning Travel Diary.

Recording at Bizovik Bridge, Ljubljana

“Singing bridges” is a sonic sculpture, playing the cables of stay-cabled and suspension bridges as musical instruments. To create this work I will amplify and record the sound of bridge cables around the world. Listening in to the secret voice of bridges as the inaudible vibrations in the cables are translated into sound.

An urban sound-scape that reflects the physical and metaphoric structure of the telecommunications network, with its fibre-optic cables circling the globe. The iconography of the bridge cables echoes the telecommunications lines stretching across the globe and linking us together. The work plays on an acoustic extension and interpretation of the constant flow of information and data through these cables.

In the ultimate realisation of this idea, bridges at locations around the world are linked and played in real-time to create an International Bridge Symphony. As the Bridges are connected through the sound of their cables, they create an Acoustic Indra’s Net.

The cables of the bridge also reflect the vaulting in a church, designed to lift the spirit of the congregation to heaven with the vibrations of the choir’s singing. A metaphor for spiritual communication, the bridge cables arching skyward have the potential to lift the commuter to a higher plane.

The project offers a re-interpretation of the familiar architecture of concrete and steel into an experience of metaphysical connection. Allowing for the possibility of a transformative experience of the bridge, other than the everyday pragmatic, economic and visual encounters with architecture.

The sound of singing bridges all around the globe may also strike the resonant frequency of the earth’s materials and dissolve the world. Echoing the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which was freed from material constraints when the resonant frequency was struck by the wind. Sounding the harmonic frequency within the unheard vibrations of the cables will release the voice and liberate the spirit of each bridge.

You can listen to some of Jodi’s bridge recordings on here and see a map of the bridges she has recorded here.