Friday, February 28, 2014
Janet Cardiff (born 1957) and George Bures Miller (born 1960)
This installation, recently up at the Cloisters in NY, emphasizes sound and space as sculptural elements of the subjective experience. The Forty Part Motet consists of forty speakers, each of a single voice, collectively singing a reworking of Spem in alium by Thomas Tallis, 1573. Each audience member's interaction both constructs and contributes to the sculptural whole, demonstrating the variability of experience through elements of space, movement, and sensation.
more about Tallis's Spem in alium
Check out the Cardiff/Miller website for info on some more of their installations and other projects. Many explore the roles of visual and auditory sensation in the creation, suspension, and intermingling of realities, such as this installation, which does so specifically within the spatial context of the cinema.
Cardiff has also done some interesting "walks"--guided or mediated experiences exploring perception and sensation in relation to memory, space, and time.
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Serendipitous connection with the Music History Lecture series - the subject this week is centered around Monteverdi's Vespers, and more broadly polyphonic contrapuntal sacred choral music from the 16th and 17th centuries. Obviously a later time period and setting, but listening to the Vespers (1610), the polyphony rendered by the multiple singers is striking, even without the complexity and layering of 40 parts.
ReplyDeleteI saw/heard this piece, in an earlier version, at PS1 in Queens several years ago. It was quite stunning. But I was more intrigued by the waking piece she created, which had me wandering through the building (a former public school, turned contemporary art museum) accompanied by the sound of Cardiff's voice and all kinds of sounds and musics.
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