Weathering: perspectives on the Northumbrian landscape through sound art and musical improvisation

Abstract

Landscape Quartet was an AHRC-funded project carrying out artistic and philosopical research into environmental sound art. In contrast to a ‘field recording’ approach to the environment, Landscape Quartet devised participative and improvisatory approaches to making sound art in and with the landscape. The paper analyses the author's work related to the group from a predominantly phenomenological perspective, and draws on authors from geography, philosophy and anthropology to interrogate the experiences of working in this way. That landscapes are dynamic and temporal phenomena is congruent with the forms of musical activity, but this congruency is not without its problems. The history of landscape study is highly visually oriented, and there is a danger of transposing assumptions from visual approaches onto the sonic. However, the paper also refuses a phonocentric approach, arguing that Ingold’s insistence on the intersensorial nature of landscape experience is essential to fully account for environmental sound art.

Keywords:

• Improvisation
• sound
• landscape
• participation
• artistic research

Acknowledgements

The practical research activities on which this paper is based were made possible by a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, grant number AH/J004995/1.

Notes

1. Exceptions to this can be found in Revill (2012, 2013a, 2013b), Gallagher (2011), Gallagher and Prior (2014), Smith (1997, 2000) and Ingold (2000).

2. Related approaches include EcoSono (Burtner, 2011), and Team Sports (http://www.bangthebore.org/archives/3498).

3. Acousmatic listening is when the source of the sound is not seen or otherwise known, and the ‘normal’ bonding together of sight and sound is broken.

4. I have discussed this, and its implications for the sonic arts, in greater detail in Hogg (2013).

5. To dwell, for Heidegger, is an ontological condition which he illuminates through the etymological links between the German verbs ‘to be’ and ‘to build’ and ‘to care for, to farm’ (Heidegger, 1977, pp. 324–327). ‘What then does ich bin mean? The old word bauen, to which the bin belongs, answers: ich bin, du bist mean I dwell, you dwell’ (Heidegger, 1977, p. 325).

6. See, for example, ‘Northumbrian Wind Lines’ on soundcloud—https://soundcloud.com/bennetthogg/northumbrian-wind-lines-no-1.

7. See, for example, ‘A Gift of Wind and Snow’ on soundcloud—https://soundcloud.com/bennetthogg/bennett-hogg-and-stefan.

8. An example of this can be seen and heard on vimeo with Bennett Hogg and Michael Bridgewater—http://vimeo.com/64993807.

9. See, for example, a live duo performed at Klagshamns udde, near Malmö, August 2013, on vimeo—https://vimeo.com/78436702.