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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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author's artist conception of audience appreciating audio
cyborg notes:
Janet Cardiff's 40 Piece Motet* made me think of old Star Trek episodes when Kirk would prove to some alien race that humans -- with their intermingled amibtion, passion, and technology -- are truly the most marvelous creatures. The idea behind the piece is simple: a recording of a choir performing Spem in Alium by Thomas Tallis in which each voice is a separate channel with a separate speaker, set at human-head height on an upright stand. All the speakers are in a wide circle around the perimeter of the room, so you can walk around slowly, listening to each person's contribution. You can stand in the middle of the room to get the full effect or you can pick a speaker/person (there's a tenor at the west end of the Power Plant installation that I particularly like) and hang out with them, following the thread of their part through the complex harmonies. Thomas Tallis (c1505-1585) wrote the piece for spatial effect, with the 40 voices divided into 8 separate choirs that might encircle the audience. I found Cardiff's incarnation of the work extremely moving; a marriage of physiology and technology that delivers an exquisite, complicated experience of beauty.
Other of Cardiff's major works demand a relinquishment of will on the part of the audience. They enforce submission to the artist's narrative environment and then, once you have given over, tease you in your disorientation. Paradise Institute requires you to line up for the opportunity to sit in a glorified crate and get spooked by the sounds in your headphones. The outdoor audio tours give you directives and play tricks on your mind, juggling the real versus recorded envrironments. Cardiff and partner George Bures Miller are brilliant with both sound technology and psychology, and the work is effectively invasive and transporting, the story unfolding right inside your head, just between the ears.
Being a control freak, I mightily resist this dynamic and resort to picking apart the narratives. The metaphors ring wrong, but this might simply be due to my recalcitrance. 40 Part Motet, however, is the exact opposite. It's art that lays there open, demanding nothing and offering a lot. Cardiff's extra stroke of brilliance was to record a rehearsal, rather than a performance, and to include a period of idle chit-chat before the singing starts. Two tenors discuss their inability to hit B-flat unless hungover, there is coughing, shuffling and general, gentle hubub. There is a pregnant moment of silence before the first note, the time when the choir turns focus on their work -- humans collecting themselves from the world and realigning as diaphragms, pipes, and air -- embodied here and delivered through electricity, cables, and finely-tuned machines.
(* the piece is on at The Power Plant in Toronto til September 6th)