KultureFlash ::: Artworker of the Week ::: Catherine Yass

ARTWORKER OF THE WEEK #13

Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller

Forty-Part Motet, 2001
Insatallation view at the Whitechapel Art Gallery (until 24/07/03)
40 track audio installation
Duration: 14 minutes 7 seconds
Sung by Salisbury Cathederal Choir
Recording and post-production: SoundMoves
Sound editing: George Bures Miller and Steve Williams

Janet Cardiff was born in Brussels, Ontario, Canada in 1957. In collaboration with George Bures Miller (bn. 1960), they have exhibited their work throughout Canada, Europe and the USA. In 2001 they represented Canada at the Venice Biennale with their critically acclaimed installation, The Paradise Institute and in the same year had their first mid-career survey at P.S.1 in New York. Cardiff has created site-specific audio and video walks for a number of group exhibitions such as Skulptur Projekte, Munster (1997); Sao Paolo Biennial (1998); The Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (1999); The Museum as Muse, MoMA, New York (1999); and 010101, SFMOMA, San Francisco (2001), among others. They currently live and work in Berlin.

KultureFlash: What is it about sound and the sense of hearing that so appeals to you?

Janet Cardiff: For me it's about the way sound can present a physical environment. People have different types of filters: some are really affected by colour, some by smell, but my primary filter is sound -- I'm aware of it all the time. I think it's very much a product of where you grow up, and I grew up in a really quiet environment where if you heard something it was unusual rather than the norm. I really feel sound physically and conceptually when I'm thinking about my work: I see it almost as a visual element.

George Bures Miller: I also think that sound is something that goes straight into you. Think about music—the sound waves can actually affect you physically -- you really feel them hitting you.

KF: And what draws you to having an audience actively participate and interact with your artworks?

JC: George and I have tried to stay away from formats that are about directly about interactivity -- it has a tendency to become gimmicky. I think the main way the works interact with the public is through the intimacy that's involved. We are mainly interested in the content and the connection -- throwing the viewer off-balance in different ways through a perceived personal bond.

GBM: The Binaural audio that we use really gives each person an individual spatial experience -- you get a real one-to-one sensation.

KF: Your work often implicitly or explicitly plays with the artifice of cinema and the coded associations that come along with certain music, sound effects, narratives and images. Tell me about your interest in film as a medium.

JC: We have both always loved film. We use the language of cinema because we know it's a communication that people can access easily. One of the things about the media of cinema is its ability to transport you somewhere else creating that strange separation from the reality you are living in. We use that a great deal in our installations as well as the audio-walks: you're in one layer of reality, overlaid with the physical world.

GBM: We use cinematic cliches in a way to tap into the subconscious that we all share through watching all kinds of movies and TV.

JC: But, at the same time we like to push it into other genres so it changes into something else. A lot of art is about how the viewer enters in and enters out. What we are trying to do is to have people coming in and getting totally involved, then we shift them to another place.

GBM: Or pull the rug out from under them... we have fun with it as well. Actually, we are lucky in the artworld -- we have this audience that will accept things that maybe filmmakers can't get away with.

JC: The art audience wants to be surprised, and wants to be pushed to other levels. What interests us is the layering of many different aspects and conceptual planes.

KF: Tell me about your most recent installation, Berlin Files (2003).

GBM: In some ways it seems more conventional because it's a frontal, single-channel video installation with a soundtrack that goes alongside. We are using this old technology called Ambisonic Surround Sound which gives not only surround sound, but also height and depth information so you get the sense of sound going up and down and actually moving around you. So, we are exploring how this sphere of sound functions with the flat plane of cinema.

JC: We are also thinking about space conceptually -- we are trying to really immerse the viewer into the different environments.

KF: Where were the images drawn from?

JC: Mostly Berlin and Canada.

GBM: We really thought about how sound and image interacts. For example, in one long steady-cam shot through one of these classic Berlin apartments you can hear a piano off in the distance playing this scary music, and as you get closer and closer you finally see a pianist actually playing music that had previously been perceived as the soundtrack. Then we twist it again and a full orchestral ensemble cuts in around you playing the same creepy music for the movie that you are now involved in. So, you get this conceptual flip-flop happening. We are always juggling these levels of reality.

KF: The audio-walk, Missing Voice (Case Study B) (1999) takes the participant on a physical and psychological journey around the Whitechapel area. What was it about Whitechapel and the East End of London that initially attracted you?

JC: I liked the history, and the diversity. It's a really interesting area to work in because there are so many levels of sound. You come down from this old library (the Whitechapel Library) and into Brick Lane, a place where immigrants have always come in and out and where many people have gone missing mysteriously over the years. When I was researching this walk, I realised that people would deliberately go to this area to lose themselves—you could literally disappear. Then, you cross over Commercial Street and you're in the City full of businessmen in ties and women in suits, and its really fast and really loud. Then you go into the church there, and finally into Liverpool St. Station. I'm always trying to figure out textures. The texture of the city is always affecting you whether you are aware of it or not, and this is really an important part of the walks and their formal construction.

KF: Have you noticed any significant changes to the area since the audio was made in 1999? And how will this affect the audience's experience?

GBM: They're going to get run over! The zebra crossing is not there anymore. It's now one of those push the button things where eventually the light might turn -- if you’re lucky. And it's off the right, when Janet says go to the left...

JC: Hopefully people will figure it out! One of the things I like about the walks as they are repeated over the years is how you can see things changing. Like at one point I would walk along and see scaffolding, and now you see there's a brand new building. I love this layering of time, because the piece is essentially about the layering of time.

KF: If you could make a sound or video walk anywhere in the world, and at any time, where would that be?

JC: The quick answer is no, I don't really have anywhere specific in mind. Underground tunnels are always nice, like the piece we made in the fantastic 15th Century tunnels at the Villa Medici in Rome. People keep telling me about certain places and I tend to respond to these suggestions if I find the location appropriate. The main thing is that it has to be an interesting site, it has to have variety, and it has to have resonance.

GBM: Now we realise that it has to be relatively quiet too. London's a bit loud for a walk...

KF: How did Forty-Part Motet come about?

JC: One of the singers I had hired for a previous project knew that I had an interest in sculptural sound and gave me a CD of this 16th century motet by Thomas Tallis -- a piece of music with 40 different harmonies.

GBM: If you go along with the myth, Tallis composed this piece for a church that had eight alcoves and he placed a choir of five singers in each so the sound would completely surround the congregation, and move all over the place.

GBM: But on the CD the forty voices together just sound like mush. Janet came to me wondering if it might be possible to record every singer individually and put them through a separate speaker. This wound up being an enormously difficult project. We were working on this at the time that the new hard-disc technology was being released for multi-track recording, and the forty different tracks had to be played back through two computers linked together.

JC: The editing was very difficult. At first, after all that time, and all that money, the piece still sounded like mush. We still had to record the choir singing together even though each singer was being recorded singly. The crosstalk and echoes were preventing it from being the spatial piece that I wanted. We had to re-edit until we finally got the effect we were after.

KF: You once described you sound pieces as both "gestural" and "sculptural". Could you elaborate on this?

JC: I thought it was quite interesting that after one of my audio walks, Kasper Koenig (Frankfurt's Portikus Museum Director) invited me to take part in a sculpture project. I don’t really define how my art should be perceived or interpreted, but it does create a sculptural space that you walk through and the listener becomes a moving part of this environment.

GBM: Henry Moore once said, "Sculpture is like a journey. You have a different view as you return." This really works as a great quotation for Janet's walks because they really are a journey. We're also really interested in this idea of the "sphere of sound", the space that you navigate. You're surrounded by this sound that moves, and you are moved by it.

Interview conducted by Kate Zamet.

Kate Zamet is a freelance writer and art advisor. She has written for Art Papers, Blueprint, Contemporary, Flash Art and is also a Contributing Editor for Free-Eye.

Image © the artist, courtesy, Luhring Augustine, New York, USA.