Sound Car – Richard Higlett (Wales)

7 – 9 April
Bangor, Bethesda, Betws-y-Coed

Tour & Open Workshops, FREE

• Saturday 7 April, 2 – 4 pm, Clock Tower, Bangor
• Sunday 8 April (Easter Sunday), 2 – 4 pm, Tourist Information Centre car park, Betws y Coed
• Monday, 9 April, 2 – 4 pm, Spar car park, Bethesda

Watch out for Richard Higlett’s sound-car taking the sound of Menai Suspension bridge into Bangor and Snowdonia. You could see (and hear) the car anywhere, anytime as he and Jodi Rose take the car-roof mounted mega sound-system around North Wales.

You can be sure to catch him in Bangor, Betws and Bethesda at the times above when you can drop-in to a free sound-art workshop in the sound-car boot!

Sound Car

Richard Higlett’s Sound Car is a high power speaker system mounted on the roof of a modest ford fiesta. The vehicle becomes a tool for sound artists, experimental musicians and spoken word performers. Something like a modern town crier, the Sound Car will travel the A5 to perform sonic interventions in Bangor, Bethesda and Betws y Coed, creating work using gathered sounds and records of local voices wherever it finds a lay by, verge or place to park.

Collaboration

Working with Australian sound artist Jodi Rose, Higlett will transport the sounds of Menai Suspension Bridge into the centre of Bangor and then on down the A5 to Bethesda and Betws y Coed.

History

The sound car project was launched as ‘The GPS (Gallery of Portable Sound)’ in October 2011 in a collaboration with the Sonic 3-piece Bear-Man. ‘All These Worlds Are Yours’ involved a real-time response from within the car to what was beyond the windows. Looking at roundabouts across Cardiff, the band produced a sonic circle in the urban environment. The piece was in part inspired by methods of sonic warfare and how sound is used to affect emotions.

Artist

Richard Higlett is a visual artist now working increasingly with sound. Previous projects involve elements of activity that could be seen as ‘acts of folly’ but by showing what something is not, something is defined in a more profound way. In 2008, he created the now infamous, ‘Song For Jack’ a canine choir tribute for Swansea Jack, at the National Maritime Museum Cardiff.

Higlett also exhibits as the fictional artist Wally French, an 80 year old suburban landscape painter and is co-founder of Goat Major Projects which opens in April 2012, in Cardiff.

Presented by Soundlands for Bangor Sound City in association with Pontio.

Thanks to the University of Bangor School of Music.