Heavy metal to ring out as the public offered chance to play bridge
IT HAS already carried hundreds of naked people covered in blue paint as part of a mass art installation.
But this weekend Hull’s swinging footbridge over the River Hull will be transformed into a giant musical instrument as part of City of Culture 2017.
Resembling a giant pinball flipper, Scale Lane Bridge is the first in the world to allow pedestrians to stay on board when it opens to river traffic. It will be put to a new use today and tomorrow when composer Nye Parry leads sessions with the public, drawing on the Indonesian gamelan tradition which creates music by striking tuned metalwork.
Its architect, Jonathan McDowell, said it gave people “a fine excuse to bang on 350 tonnes of steel structure to make beautiful sounds offering an alternative take on Larkin’s description of Hull’s ‘different resonance’”.
Material from the workshops as well as traditional and contemporary gamelan music will be performed on the bridge on March 26. Throughout April the bridge’s inner workings will be revealed using projections by artist Madi Boyd “that act like an X-ray.”
Mr Parry said it was a “unique chance” for people to engage with local architecture through music, adding: “Sound and music have an extraordinary way of transforming a space while drawing people together.”