Do the technological devices by which we enlarge our understanding of nature enhance or diminish our sense of kindredness with it?  Richard Mabey, The Scientist and the Romantic

Quartet brings the songs of four birds encountered in the gardens of Uppark into the interior of the house. A single phrase from each of the birds’ repertoires (one lasting less than a tenth of a second and beyond the ability of the human ear to discriminate) has been analysed to reveal how its pitch and loudness varies over time. This digital process splinters the seamless flow
of each song into a mass of numbers, which are then plotted as an undulating landscape – the position, shape and height of the topography an accurate reflection of the song dynamics. To capture and preserve this sonic form within crystal glass, lasers are used to make pinpoint fractures in the vitreous material, each fracture corresponding to a single point of data. As the fractures accumulate, so the song reappears, its cadences now turned into an etching.

So much of our understanding and appreciation of the natural world is mediated through the many technologies that accompany us in our everyday lives. At Uppark, the house is full of different representations of this world in a variety of media and crafts; the whole estate itself is in many ways a grand re-presentation of the nature that was here before. Into this tradition, Quartet offers both a scientific record of that world as well as an etched composition – a murmur from the avian world beyond the window.