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JANET CARDIFF AND GEORGE BURES MILLER

Experiment in F# Minor

JANET CARDIFF AND GEORGE BURES MILLER

source: rededosaberspgovbr

Experiment in F#Minor (2013/2015), de Janet Cardiff e George Bures Miller, uma instalação sonora interativa, composta por diversos tipos de caixas acústicas, que são acionadas conforme a presença do público. Quanto mais pessoas se aproximam das caixas, mais densidade ganha o som.
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source: cardiffmiller

On a large table sits a collection of bare speakers of all shapes and sizes. Light sensors are inlaid into the edge of the table and as the viewers move around the room, their shadows cause the various sound and instrumental tracks to fade up and overlap, mingle and fade down. Numerous viewers in the room create a cacophony of musical compositions that vary according to where the audience walks or how many people are in the room. When the space is empty, the table fades to silence.

Janet Cardiff
Born: 1957, Brussels, Ontario, Canada
Lives and works: Berlin, Germany, and Grindrod, British Columbia, Canada

George Bures Miller
Born: 1960, Vegreville, Alberta, Canada
Lives and works: Berlin, Germany, and Grindrod, British Columbia, Canada
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source: canadianartca

George Bures Miller is distracted, and for good reason. Storm Room—an uncanny simulation of a Japanese thunderstorm as experienced within a small, shuddering room—is leaking. Our interview seems a quandary of energy-use: spend time parsing work for a journalist, or make sure that that work actually works. When Bures Miller’s priorities skew to the latter, his creative and romantic partner Janet Cardiff—bless her soul—enthusiastically fills in the blanks.
Storm Room is part of “Lost in the Memory Palace,” a spectacular new exhibition debuting April 5 at the Art Gallery of Ontario and due to travel to the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2014. The show offers seven works from throughout the internationally celebrated art duo’s career. Among these are 1995’s Dark Pool, an antique-filled storeroom in which old speakers sound mysterious messages as viewers pass by; 2005’s Opera for a Small Room, a chilling vignette of a shack-bound, music-addicted recluse (there are almost 2,000 vinyl records in this installation, and eight active record players); and a new work, Experiment in F# Minor, in which speakers play music based on viewers’ movements around a table. Also on view is Cardiff’s crowd-pleasing The Forty Part Motet from 2001, a moving recording of a 16th-century choral piece across 40 speakers.
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source: mcasdorg

The multimedia artworks of Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller emphasize aural and visual experiences that transport the viewer to other realms of consciousness. Their work is highly scripted, meticulously detailed, and often cinematic in scope, breaking down distinctions between fiction and everyday reality. Through various levels of engagement, the viewer becomes a participant, either witnessing a phenomenon or becoming immersed in a scenario.

Janet Cardiff began collaborating with fellow Canadian artist and partner George Bures Miller in 1995. When Cardiff and Miller represented Canada at the 49th Venice Biennale with The Paradise Institute (2001), they won both La Biennale di Venezia Special Award and the Benesse Prize, which recognizes artists who “break new artistic ground with an experimental and pioneering spirit.” They are now among the foremost artists of their generation, and their work has been shown around the world.

Organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Vancouver Art Gallery, Lost in the Memory Palace is a selected survey that takes as its focus Cardiff and Miller’s work from the mid-1990s to today. Spanning a period from key early pieces such as Dark Pool (1995) and The Muriel Lake Incident (1999) to recent works including Killing Machine (2007) and Experiment in F# Minor (2013), the exhibition consists of a series of discrete immersive environments.

These installations, all of which have a strong architectural character, are imaginary spaces where time slows down and is altered, allowing fictional and historical narratives to blend and merge with the viewer’s own experience and memory. As environments that viewers understand to be art yet with which they willingly engage both physically and psychically, Cardiff and Miller’s works encourage shifts in consciousness and create uniquely compelling possible worlds.

Lost in the Memory Palace: Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller is co-organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Vancouver Art Gallery. Lead support for the San Diego presentation has been generously provided by Drs. Stacy and Paul Jacobs. Institutional support for MCASD is provided, in part, by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture.