A yurt overlooking the expanse of Cardigan Bay is the blank canvas for a remarkable symphony this week.
John Redhead is living in the 16 foot diameter traditional Mongolian-style dwelling at Coleg Harlech for four days and recording the experience for a soundscape production.
Every creak and sigh of the timber-framed, canvas-clad yurt is picked up by John’s recording equipment and used to create a computer-generated home symphony.
John is literally the artist in residence for Coleg Harlech as he makes his home in the yurt and home is where the yurt is for the 57-year-old Yorkshireman who usually lives high in the Pyrenees, just inside the French border with Spain.
He’s no stranger to Coleg Harlech where he has previously lectured or to Snowdinia where he once lived and where he has climbed most of the mountains.
“This visit came out of a multimedia lecture I gave at the college. Coleg Harlech is a fantastic place and does so much great work.
“I’ve climbed a lot in North Wales and used to live here in Snowdonia in Llanberis. I regard myself as an artist first and a mountaineer second but art is my work and I use painting, words, images and sounds.
“But this residency is concentrating on sounds. It is a sonic exploration of where I am living for four days.
“It’s a search for the meaning of home in the widest sense and involves all the sounds you take for granted, every day sounds of doors, the rustling of sheets or paper, the sound of the wind and the rain.
“The sounds you hear if you just pause and take the time ro really listen. They’re the sounds of the building itself and sometimes people find them really spooky but it is the building that’s speaking to you and you need to listen to your home.
“Your house is constantly saying something to you, every second it’s saying something different and listening to it is magical and a very tranquil thing to do.”
John’s residency is part of a Dynamo funded Creative Technologies HUB supported by the Welsh Government.
The aim is to encourage learners to develop closer links to industry and become inspired to start up new media companies here in Wales.
Coleg Harlech Principal Trefor Owen said: “We’re delighted to have John here. He has worked with us before and is a hugely interesting and very special artist with a real affinity for this area.
“I’m sure that his stay will lead to something interesting, thought-provoking and challenging and that’s what art is all about.”
John, originally from Thornton le Dale, near Scarborough, has even combined his mountaineering with his art – he has scaled not just mountains but buildings too and some pretty big ones.
He has clambered up Liverpool’s colossal Anglican Cathedral, the largest in the UK, for Granada TV, and also scaled the 900-year-old Norwich Cathedral for Anglian TV, both without the aid of ropes or pegs, and also the 17-storey Hull Royal Informary.
He has also created soundscapes in such diverse places as wild and windswept Dinorwig Quarry and Liverpool’s bustling Bold Street.
He said: “As an artist it is about taking a forensic approach to sounds.
“I use a computer programme to interpret and mix the sounds and some of the results are pretty amazing – I take the raw sounds and put them under the microscope, sometimes slowing them down or amplifying them.
“Dinorwig Quarry is an awesome instrument and full of the sounds of what was left behind from when it was a working quarry.
“In the Pyrenees I recorded the sound of a tree bough bending in the wind and slowed it down and it was just like a piano so you can have a forest of pianos.
“The computer helps me see the sound so what I make is a sonic painting.”
For more on John Redhead go to www.johnredhead.org
