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.