To listen with the eyes

This photograph is, practically, a betrayal. It is a large outdoor sound installation created by the French composer Pierre Sauvageot. It is titled Harmonic Fields, Harmonic Fields, a musical play on words that also appeals to the landscape that surrounds it. There are hundreds of instruments that no musician plays. It is the wind that makes them sound. Bamboo flutes, triangles, bells, chimes, propeller sirens, drums, and the entire bowed string family gently release their voice with the tickling of the wind that this week has blown on the hills of Baildon Moor, north of Bradford, in Yorkshire. It is a traveling event that, since 2010, has adapted to landscapes throughout Europe. Pierre Sauvageot, specializing in creations in public spaces, always experiments with landscapes and cities and encourages human interaction. Nature, everyday noises, objects, and atmospheric phenomena become part of the orchestra.In this backlit image, the silhouettes of the instruments can be distinguished as if they were an unusual plantation. Imposing trees that make the human figure look small. The woman in the photo is a wind farmer, a wind cultivator. They move slowly among the installations, activating and adjusting the sound. Sonic agriculture. It is as if they were working a field to improve a harvest that is intangible. The strength and direction of the wind determine the rhythm, volume, and the instruments that play. Nature decides whether the orchestra plays pianissimo or at what moment a gust of wind will cause an sforzando that will sound like an esoteric moan in the middle of the moors. The photograph conveys spirituality and has something ancestral about it; it looks like an offering to the gods. The music we cannot hear must be like a language to communicate with them. Laments or prayers that rise towards the sky. Music is, in principle, a human act. It is people who control the instruments and the sound. But at Harmonic fields control is ceded to nature and left in the hands of the wind force.Photography represents precisely what it cannot show. The wind is invisible, but we sense it in the image. It is the great absent protagonist. Sound cannot be photographed, and yet, we notice its presence through the artifacts and the landscape. The sky, the clouds, and the elevated and free exposure of the instruments allow us to perceive this air that traverses the space. The image is a betrayal precisely because the creator advised against photographing his Harmonic Fields. The composer has always wanted to keep his work against the primacy of the gaze to prioritize listening. But, on the other hand, the installation has such an indisputable and powerful visual presence that it makes capturing it with a camera inevitable. We cannot prick up our ears, but the image helps us imagine the sound. Photography forces us to listen with our eyes.