Janet Cardiff

Recently I've been doing some research on Janet Cardiff. Shes a Canadian born artist who is most known for her audio walks and installations. Frequently (especially more recently), she collaborates with her husband George Bures Miller. You can see pictures and other samples of her work at her website. Cardiff's audio walks involve the participant listening to her voice as she guides them through an existent landscape (be it a museum, park, downtown area, etc.). The art of the audio walks are to add in another landscape, an aural one, presented and constructed by Cardiff.

Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller

In my research I focused more on Cardiff and Miller's installations. These installations produce a variety of exciting interactions between the participant and the artwork. A couple of examples are "The Killing Machine" 2007: an installation that focused on capital punishment and drew the participant into the work through their activation of the installation via pushing a red button.

"The Killing Machine" Cardiff and Miller 2007

"The Killing Machine" Cardiff and Miller 2007

Cardiff's installations and audio walks emphasize the relationship between the viewer/participant and her artwork. This serves to draw complex parallels between Cardiff's fictional created space and the reality of the participants' perceptions/actions. In doing this, Cardiff has intertwined the notions of concept and content within artwork because her installations blur the distinction between theatricality and reality. Another example to show this is an installation Cardiff and Miller set up at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The show was called "Pandemonium" and it was a sound installation set up on top of an abandoned prison.

"Pandemonium" 2005-2007. Cardiff and Miller.

The sound installation creates a psychologically intense atmosphere (which is probably an understatement). Sounds run throughout a sectioned off wing on a 15 minute loop. The sounds wax and wane and eventually climax. This brings up the notion of the disembodied voice, another theme present in much of Cardiff's work. However, the rhythmic sequences that Cardiff and Miller create cannot be heard from all over, the participants' position within the vast installation largely determines which sounds they will hear, and thus, their experience.

Janet Cardiff has worked on many more installations and, though I did not focus on it as much, her audio walks are very important as well. I have become very interested in this artist and hope to see her work sometime in the recent future.