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Abstract
This paper discusses the arts practice that emerged during the AHRC funded research project ‘Landscape Quartet: Creative Practice and Philosophical Reflexion in Natural Environments’ (2012–2014). The introduction covers the project's eco-critical basis, practical methodologies developed during it (including the roles of experimentation and improvisation), and the particular epistemological value of practice-led research in this context. A broader theoretical discussion then outlines how non-representational theory and Tim Ingold's concept of dwelling help to expand and clarify the argument for participative environmental arts practice. These ideas are then developed through a series of examples and a conceptual approach based on notions of working with, of, and for the environment. It concludes by considering the multifaceted ontological significance of experiences of ecological arts practice, directly, as an in situ performer on the one hand, and with subsequent artefacts, performances and installations removed from the original site, on the other.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
[1] A position paper entitled ‘Landscape Quartet: strategies for ecological sound art' given at Music and ecologies of sound: theoretical and practical projects for a listening of the world, University of Paris 8, France, 27–30 May, 2013.
[2] ‘Landscape Quartet: Creative Practice and Philosophical Reflexion in Natural Environments' was a research project funded by the UK Arts & Humanities Research Council during 2012–2014 (Hogg, Citation2015).
[3] Although a Quartet, it is a mistake to assume that we always work as a strict foursome. The term is employed more loosely to imply a team with four members working variously in twos, threes, at times individually and only occasionally as a full quartet but always under the umbrella of the Quartet's conceptual framework and methodological approaches.
[4] There is a connection here with Haseman's proposal for ‘performance research’ (alongside qualitative research and quantitative research) which
holds that practice is the principal research activity—rather than only the practice of performance—and sees the material outcomes of practice as all-important representations of research findings in their own right. [ … ] Its plurivocal potential operates through interpretative epistemologies where the knower and the known interact, shape and interpret the other. (Citation2006, p. 7; see also Citation2010, pp. 147–157)
[5] A multi-channel durational performance piece constructed from field recordings made in and around the local of the performance's venue. Mêtis explores the interface between installation art, sonic art, and improvised electronic performance practice (the work's structure, sound diffusion and processing constituting its improvised elements). The World Forum for Acoustic Ecology performance was one of six carried out during 2011 based on three locations (Guildford in the UK, Corfu, and Prague).
[6] Lorimer (Citation2005, p. 83) uses the qualifier more-than-representational to make this point. A useful and wholly appropriate counter to the binary otherwise implied and something Abram does also for the term and idea of the non-human world (The spell of the sensuous: Perception and language in a more-than-human world, Citation1997). Not to be left out, I have argued for the modification of Bailey's widely used term ‘non-idiomatic improvisation’ in that ‘“more-than-idiomatic improvisation” offers a more accurate description of music making that extends its identity and motivation beyond expression of an idiom, and which although “can be highly stylised, is not usually [only] tied to representing an idiomatic identity” (Bailey, Citation1992, pp. xi–xii)’ [emphasis and addition mine] (Sansom, in press).