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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)
*Issue #2 of Spacing is out now and it looks fabulous. Will make a better post when I've read it carefully. For now let me say the design is way better than last time, and the cover is GR-8. I am loving the slogan:
it took us millions of years to learn how to walk and only 100 to forget
"We won't say that we're better, it's just that we're less worse." -Arrogant Worms, "Proud to be Canadian"
It's Canada Day. I've grown accustomed to checking in with Mr. Wilson's holiday posts, but he won't be writing about this one, not being a Canadian. Our summer holidays are all strange. I suppose there are people who reflect with reverence on Queen Victoria while sitting on their sixpack in the bush on 24-Weekend. Wait a second, no I don't. Canada Day is mostly celebrated by the playing of bad, comedic songs on the CBC (like the link above) that reflect all kinds of stereotpyes we have about stereotypes the Americans have about us. There's mass driving to cottages, and face painting at lame corporate street festivals for the kids who's parents can't afford to leave town. Canadian nationalism is a limp and jiggly thing. As it should be! We are a collection of peoples getting along, mostly, with some of our social systems still in place. It's low key, but it's worth preserving. My neighbourhood today (and last night! loud) is all about Portugal winning soccer games. At the Portuguese bakery I go to daily the lady quizzes me on my heritage. I say Scottish and she beams, "We knew you weren't just pure Canadian. Are you cheering for Portugal?" I beam back (of course I'm cheering for Portugal, I like to see my neighbours having fun). I'm also happy because if being from Scottish stock, which makes my lineage about 100% old school, Protestant, Upper Canadian, counts as something other than "pure" Canadian, then not a single one of us in this country is "pure." Which is how I like it.
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