Signal-on-Sea, a sound art installation brought to the area by Glasgow-based art producers, Cryptic, and the work’s creators, Dutch duo, Strijbos and Van Rijswijk is up and running on Irvine Beach.

This free event, supported by EventScotland through the Year of Coasts and Waters 20/21 and Scotland’s Events Recovery Fund, will run until Sunday, July 25 from 12-10.30pm each day.

Twenty-two speakers all play a different track, interweaving operatic all-female voices with an enchanting soundscape amplified across a stretch of the beach.

Last Thursday, the beach was busy with people making the most of the late evening sunshine and they got to enjoy a preview of the event before it went live on Friday. We spoke to folk sitting on the beach to ask them what they thought.

Friends Becca and Megan had no idea what was going on when they arrived at the beach. They’d popped down just to enjoy their chippy. Megan said: “At first I found it all a bit jarring, I wasn’t sure where the sounds were coming from and if I was maybe hearing voices. But I soon settled down and I find it quite peaceful now, it’s quite calming.”

Alan Hughes from the Irvine Clean-up Crew was there, too. The group had been invited to attend the preview, he said: “I’m really enjoying it, I’ll be coming down again tomorrow because I think I’d like to sit down and really immerse myself in it.

“I think you’ll find there’ll be quite a few people here tomorrow night who wouldn’t normally come down.”

The organisers and creators of the installation were keen to stress that the beach will remain open to all throughout. They want it to live in symbiosis with the people of Irvine.

Rob Van Rijswijk, one half of the creative team, said: “It’s not something you can just come and do (install it), you need collaboration and partnership, from Cryptic, and also Irvine, with the community and with the council as well.

“We come from the concert hall, from the theatre, but we really like to go more into public space and use technology, to research how we can use it in an artistic way.

“Of course you need to be aware this is not our stage only, it’s everyone’s stage, so when you create the piece you need to think about this. We’re not trying to be intrusive, we’re just there as part of the landscape and acoustics.

“We thought about a beach place and then we thought about Irvine because we want to connect with the people here.

“It’s the people who create the piece, it’s not about us.

“Of course we bring something, but it’s the people with the landscape and how they react and listen to their own thoughts and feelings and memories, that’s what this piece is about.”