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On 16 October 2021, the Icelandic Baroque ensemble Nordic Affect premiered Quartet for a Landscape at Mengi in Reykjavik. A recording was made of that live performance and on 2 November 2021, at dawn, I played the recording through a single speaker installed at the rock formation ‘Stanage Edge’ on the border of Derbyshire and South Yorkshire in England. The installation was filmed for dissemination online. The ‘work’ Quartet for a Landscape encompasses the constellation of these intersecting moments and media: the composition process, the score, the live musical performance, the sound recording, the installation, the film, and all and any interactions with those moments or media. This multi-media essay is likewise a part of ‘the work’. Drawing on writing by Anna Tsing, Chris Cutler, Gerald Langer, and others, as well as autoethnography, I explore the project’s central research questions: how do Baroque instruments relate to the historical and ecological; what role can technology and digital media play in facilitating and highlighting these connections; and how might an artwork of this kind help access understanding of contemporary technology, Petro-capitalism, and ecological destruction in the Anthropocene?
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