Pierre Sauvageot is a Frenchman that hears music in the wind... and he wants us to hear it too. Late last month the eccentric Frenchman populated the fields above the town of Grenoble in France with some of the strangest looking installations, all designed to make light music of the Alpine breeze. Harmonic Fields is an immersive experience that debuted in the Netherlands in 2009 but was inspired 20 years earlier by traditional Indonesian Scarecrows that harnessed natures gusts to emit sounds that rang across the rice fields. Building on this concept and exploring traditional wind harp techniques and wind chime styles, Sauvageot (originally a Jazz trumpeter but later a composer and artist) saw fit to make sweet music from one of natures most fleeting elements.  Sometimes gusting, at other times barely a whisper the beauty in this work is the reliance on Mother Nature to pick up her baton and conduct the show.   Sauvageot describes the creation as:
a symphonic march for 1,000 aeolian instruments and moving audience
Perhaps not immediately "musical" by conventional standards, the installation is none-the-less an aural treat and the last week the UK was able to wander amongst 500 odd aeolian instruments as the artworks were displayed in Cumbria.
Harmonic Fields is a reaction against decibels and megawatts. It is music in its simplest, most primal form.
The plan is for the works to be exhibited in New York and further afield throughout the next 12 months.