Harry Bertoia: Sound Sculpturer

This article isn't a review or current news. It's just an article about a man I have a lot of respect for and feel should be better well-known. I love this man. He built many metal sound sculptures with his son, Val Bertoia. He played these sculptures or let them play themselves. He recorded hours and hours of these performances in his Sonambient Lab and it's utterly one of the most beautifully man-made sounds I've ever had the pleasure of listening to. Taken from Harry Beroia's biography page written by Val, who has much more articulate and interesting things to say about his father than I:

It was Harry's input-energies that made his sculptures great enough to radiate endless amounts of enjoyment and encouragement for living life.

His input-energies, of course, were positive extensions of natural forms, textures, colors, miracles. What Nature could do in small living forms, such as the growing of dandelions, shrubs, grasses, Harry would magnify in metals for the observer to be surprised with shimmering beauty that may have been overlooked in (Nature's) small scale. On the other end of the human scale, what we see as clouds, ocean-waves, or erupting volcanoes, Harry would capture glimpses of these miracles in metals to show that we are god-like in our abilities to observe.

So his idea of metal clouds consisted on many, many rods, each coated with molten brass by hand to give lustrous and tactile qualities not found in milled extrusions. Building up large nets of these rods brazed together to give an effect of multi-layered space and time. Why was Harry doing this?

Don't ask; just do it. He was on a self-expressive trend that was defined by Nature Herself. What Nature did not do, Harry did, as a human extension of Nature. The human trend of this man (or let's say Super man) was to bring together every way possible in metals, all aspects of human existence.

I cannot find the words to say how incredible this man's vision and tangible output is. It's very unfortunate how virtually unnoticed he goes on to be when he left such wonderful works for us to feel, play, and listen to. I don't know what else to say.


Below are a few clips of some of the different sculptures he built and the sounds they created:

Sample #1
Sample #2
Sample #3
Sample #4

Here's, also, a very poor short video shot at a University that demonstrates one of Mr. Bertoia's sound sculptures. It gives you a small idea of how talented the man was: