Janet Cardiff

I had head of Janet Cardiff’s work before, and the one thing everyone seemed to describe it as was spooky, now I can see why. Her use of the three-level spatial structure fooled your mind into hearing and believing in noises that were not even there. I was not even on one of her guided walks, and there were some points where I didn’t know if what I was listening to was real or just a part of the audio piece. She uses the three-level spatial structure as almost three different levels on which to disorient you. On one of the levels you can hear Cardiff’s voice guiding you, and your mind initially focuses in on this level as the level on which she is sending you different sounds, the fake level, but as she adds sound to the background and foreground you realize that you can no longer distinguish from what is real and what is just sounds she is feeding to your mind. Some of her comments I found extremely wired and I couldn’t place them, but I imagine that is one of the things you would pickup and understand better if you were on the actual walk.