Last updated at 14:55, Friday, 03 June 2011

BIRKRIGG Common is awash with musical instruments this weekend, as the latest Lakes Alive project gets under way. KARL STEEL meets the man behind the sonic landscape

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HAVE you ever wondered what the Cumbrian countryside sounds like?

A huge arts project on Birkrigg Common, near Ulverston, this weekend invites you to go and have a listen to the local landscape.

Harmonic Fields is the latest project in the Lakes Alive programme of arts and performance events throughout Cumbria.

Set on the highest point of the fellside, looking down over Morecambe Bay, to visit this collection of 500 hand-crafted Aeolian wind-powered instruments is an almost otherworldly experience.

French arts company Lieux Publics have spent all week assembling this bizarre array of sculptures, which capture the strong winds of the region and create the soundtrack to the countryside.

Artistic director Pierre Sauvageot says: “This area of the Lake District is very beautiful to look at, but most importantly for me, the weather is perfect.

“Being on the seaside, the wind blows up on to the hills and through the instruments and creates the sounds.”

He selected the site from four possible locations across Cumbria, because of its suitability for hosting the large-scale installation.

Making its UK debut from today until Sunday, the project has already been well-received in Holland and Grenoble and heads out to New York later this month.

Pierre says: “I visited some sites earlier this year, but as soon as I came here I knew this was where it should go.

“Even though it was very dark and hidden by fog, I could tell that it was right.

“There is wind, but not too strong, and there is no big problems with noise and neighbours.

“It is nice to listen to for an hour, but when you are trying to sleep it wouldn’t be so good.

“I think the audience here will want something like this, and people from urban areas will also want to travel to see landscape art instead of always staying in the city.”

Pierre and 10 other technicians arrived on Monday to install over 20 different types of conventional and makeshift instruments, including metal and wood cellos, strings, flutes, Balinese scarecrows, sirens, gongs, harps and bamboo organs, that have been organised into sections named after different types of winds from around the world.

When the wind is at its strongest you can hear the instruments from hundreds of metres away, as each one is positioned to perfection.

“It is different when the wind is strong to when there is no wind,” says Pierre.

“When it is calm, you are hearing the landscape.

“For me, as a composer, the sound is more important than the visual, so I don’t want people to take photographs - it’s not forbidden, but I want people to listen and have that as a memory. If people arrive, take a photograph, and then leave, they will probably only look at that picture once and then never again.

“People will go on a musical journey and learn about 26 different types of wind – one for each letter of the alphabet.

“I was asked whether we could only bring half of Harmonic Fields, but it is important that it is kept as a whole so that the journey is complete.

“In my opinion, it will be best around 6pm as the sun is setting, but I urge people to come down more than once and experience Harmonic Fields at different times of the day.”

An accomplished composer, Pierre is in charge of a school of up-and-coming artists, which also means that he doesn’t have much time to create new projects.

So when he does, he does so on a massive scale. His inspiration for Harmonic Fields came from the exact opposite environment, outside his studio in downtown Marseille. He says: “I live in Marseille, which is a very noisy city.

“The sounds of the cars and claxons all day long actually inspired me to create a project using mopeds as part of an orchestra.

“And then I thought; ‘what would it sound like if all those noises were taken away?’. What is the sound of the landscape.

“We are like the pilot fish who then get eaten up by the big sharks.

“We will show people what you can do with the landscape and then the big fish – the media, for example – will catch on to it.

“I think people need to have a new relationship with the landscape, and artists are leading the way.”

l Harmonic Fields will be open to the public until Sunday, from around 11am to 8pm each day.

First published at 13:08, Friday, 03 June 2011
Published by http://www.nwemail.co.uk