Community
12 June, 2026
Artists work to echo through time
ONE of the world’s most ambitious public art projects would not have been possible without the ingenuity of a Warrnambool-raised artist.
The ‘Clock of the Long Now,’ which is currently under construction, is designed to keep accurate time for 10,000 years.
The mechanical clock is over 60 metres tall and built within a hole drilled into a mountain in a remote part of Texas.
At noon each day, 10 clock bells will play a unique melody that’s never repeated over the 10,000 year lifespan of the clock.
Music industry icon Brian Eno designed a musical scale for the bells that made sense of the resonance of the confined space in the mountain, but that scale needed bells smaller than typical European church bells at each pitch if they were to fit into the clock mechanism.
And that’s where Dr Anton Hasell came in.
“They needed someone to invent a bell that was half the size of every other bell at the same musical pitch, so they asked if I could do that,” Dr Hasell said.
The solution was to design a bell sounding a “difference tone”.
This is a bell in which the multiple frequencies making up its sound are arranged in a very particular way that allows the ear to hear a pitch that is an octave lower than any frequency in the bell itself.
This “psycho-acoustic” pitch is generated in a listener’s ear.
It is a technique that large pipe organs use to generate notes lower than the largest pipes they have.
No one was sure if it could work with a bell.
After months of painstaking research and trials, Dr Hasell found a bell profile (inside and outside bell shape) that generated a difference tone pitch.
“Working with Finite Element Analysis engineering, and tuning test castings with the careful mapping of changes in the frequency array from changes in the bell’s profile allowed me to, finally, tune a bell that rang with a difference tone,” he said
“That was a joyful eureka moment.”
The ethos behind the Longnow Foundation’s 10,000 Year Clock project is to challenge short-term thinking and to encourage people to better consider future generations.
It’s a mindset that resonates with Dr Hasell, who has created dozens of public artworks, with perhaps his best-known public artwork being the Federation Bells Carillon in Melbourne’s Birrarung Marr, which was commissioned to mark the centenary of Federation.
“When I have been commissioned to create a public-space artwork I become very obsessed with the design and fabrication processes,” he said.
“Strangely though, whenever I visit a public artwork I have created it is no longer feels like mine, it has become part of the community that commissioned it.”
Dr Hasell’s path from Warrnambool to becoming an internationally recognised bell designer, sculptor and public artist has been anything but conventional.
He will share his story as part of the ArtsACTION project tonight (Friday, June 12) at Hotel Warrnambool from 5pm.
Facilitated by JumpLeads and supported by Warrnambool City Council, Regional Arts Victoria and Fletcher Jones Family Foundations, the program aims to help Warrnambool creatives build practical skills to support their practice such as promotion, collaboration and planning.
Dr Hasell said he was looking forward to meeting more Warrnambool artists, and said that his experiences as a young artist in the city in the 1960s and early 70s stayed with him.
“I had school friends as consumed by artmaking as myself and I remember fondly, on balmy evenings, walking around the Reid Oval engrossed in discussion on what made art good,” he said.
“It was a really beautiful time, and a wonderful place, to be a young person with emerging ideas about the meanings of being alive in our mysterious, magical world.
“That’s the thing about Warrnambool. It has always been a place of innovation. There’s something in the Warrnambool air (not just salt) that encourages a dreaming mind to test borders and conventions.”
He believes that at one time or another, we all stand at the end of the pier looking out into the sea-haze of an unlimited horizon.
“I’m excited to share my experiences and my advice about being an artist.”
The event is free to attend, but RSVPs are essential.
Visit events.humanitix.com/anton_hasell.
ArtsACTION project.
Regional Arts Victoria south west regional manager Stacey Barnes said ArtsACTION was a great opportunity for local creatives.
“This kind of strategic support, aligned with our regional priorities, plays an important role in helping creatives establish viable practices and deepen connections across communities,” she said.
“Investing in skills, networks and professional development is key at every level of the sector.”
To find out more and register visit https://events.humanitix.com/artsaction-warrnambool
