This is yesterday’s score for the harbour area. It overloads. Shame.  I’m asking the beagle board to pull too much sound in and out at the same time and it crashed three times on this gaming route. Back to the drawing board. Today there was rain then pause then thick sea fog then the brightest sun and still clear and silent bright. I’ve never seen anything like it. One of those moments too where you feel that you’re missing the ideal recording opportunity, the gulls calling to each other across the bay as the sun began to dip. So still. So silent. Such space.[ Remove endofpier zone KM. it's not cycleable! ..]

So the bike piece for Hailuoto is to start and go from the red pointer north west side, (at Marjaniemi) and Seppo, working at Hai Art lab, in the middle of the island, (below the l on Hailuoto),  has just finished first bike so I’m about to cycle it back across the land. This is Black Bike. Heavy somehow, not quite umped tyres, could be arduous and long, but there was a white arctic hare sat beside the road this way yesterday not to mention the pale green lichens and spring green sprouting on the conifers. With the straight road it also has a  Texan highway meets the man on the lawnmower crossing the US feel about it.

Bike build completion day in Hailuoto. Electronics engineer Seppo to come on the ferry from Oulu but the weather could have had other plans. But we are in north north Finland, and its spring so it passed and we were in Hai Art lab all day building. Again a great development in the design of the system. Seppo has bought power supplies and and plastic housing for the beagleboard rather than making them as we did in Ghent for Swamp. Diagrams and images to upload on this with full project report soon. Check progress here also. Hai Art as ever wonderful hosts. Today, sunglasses, blu tack, sun cream, batteries, rice milk and a sauna planned for tomorrow night. Also the understanding of sisu.

Kari has been making the bars to mount the speakers to the two bikes we have here. Look closely and you’ll see there’s an extension to the design, placing the speakers lower so slightly further from listeners ears, but enabling easier turn and knee movement and for these bikes a better stability. It’s brilliant. Better still he works super fast and should be finished with the paint job tonight. (Even though its Veppu, aka Mayday and a big festival here. )

Yes the quest for routes continues. The play area  around the three harbour windmills, called Marja 1, 2 and 3 will be fun but could take much zone re-drawing and GPS accuracy testing to get it going. Also its really noisy. In fact Marjaniemi is. There’s a mast that hums beautifully around middle C beside the lighthouse, my guesthouse and the start point of the piece as well as the mills whose rotating swoosh and throb can be heard along the boardwalks and beach. I’m keen to get to Sappu one way, long the beach path, and into the forest the other. With late snow and an awesome fog around, it’s not so straightforward.

Cold wind and sun and an extraordinary light that’s always changing. I am exploring bicycle access to this land. Not as easy as Anticipated. The island is sand so paths through forests are variable and also often just go to people’s houses. However the harbour is big and open so open to all kinds of possiblitites. A great chance to seeing what fun we can have with play for the cyclist rather than a journey based ride. What this can mean for the composition of course too…the bigger picture..

Arriving Hailuoto island, Finland. This has to be the antithesis to Porto and possibly 20C colder. However, on a 12 day adventure with Hai Art to make a new bicycle piece so the continuity is delightfully weird. Fantastic to be in this light and space and variation of white and the silence. My ear drums suck themselves in and out at extreme distances as there is suddenly so much to hear. Straight off the boat to go meet Karri who has developed the speaker attachment design. Here we have 2 bikes. One white one black. And we can get off road and there is almost no traffic.

Opera FiXi score, Porto, grows. We are nearly at the lighthouse turnaround point and o is the ride home a breeze.

9.30pm at the Afurada church, we have our first rehearsal of Come up. Fantastic to finally be in the same space singing plus Inés already knows the tune. This is the crew of fisher-women in Opera FiXi, who in skin tight fish skin suits sing to invite the fish their nets as they charge across the ocean. Their huge meshed nets woven from their hair and vines make great rides for the big male fish who after all these years of ocean living, decide to give up their lives to this call. Today was also the Carnation Revolution Day that celebrates overcoming  the dictatorship. Plus a full moon with a sip of port afterwards, its a good day to meet.

A morning at Sonoscopia working with Angélica Vázquez Salvi on Joana’s waltz. I am asking her to play melodically with yes, the acoustic harp sound. I think it’s a rare invitation but allowing herself to do this is superb and perfect for the piece and the intensely pretty moment by the river. She delights further by producing an almost divine solo that will have to burst out of the Mensageiro.