Morden Bog in Dorset represents a ‘Bog Woodland’, a hybrid landscape which lies within the unknown boundaries of contemporary landscape categorisation, deriving from the top-down land division associated with the Enclosures Act.

Unlike the short, repetitive rhythm of the human breath, the respiration of the bog woodland is characterized by a prolonged pattern of simultaneous inhalation and exhalation with slight variations over an annual cycle. The instrument stages this ecological phenomenon, where carbon flux, mapped from data recorded at the site provides structure to a graphic score. As opposed to sequential classical music which embodies narratives of ‘progress’ associated with the Enclosures movement, the score instead references polyphony, which Anna Tsing likens to her proposal of the assemblage as an analysis of the ‘open ended gatherings’ characteristic of multi-species interactions, with no defined boundaries. (Tsing, A., 2021)

The instrument is handmade and forms an interpretation of a Humstrum; a ‘rude, home-made’ 18th century folk instrument from Dorset, as described in William Barnes’ Dialect Glossary. Where folk music was traditionally a medium through which intimate, lived experiences of rural landscapes were portrayed, the work’s reference to this genre celebrates the cultural role of landscape perception which derives from a local, insider perceptive rather than from scientific data.