Momentous Movement: Janet Cardiff's Audio Walk

Momentous Movement: Janet Cardiff's Audio Walk Submitted by Rajdeep Sohal August 2006 Towards the Completion of MA in Communication Studies Mc Gill University COPY#l © Rajdeep Sohal 2006. 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The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriété du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in et des droits moraux qui protège cette thèse. this thesis. Neither the thesis Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels de nor substantial extracts from it celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés ou autrement may be printed or otherwise reproduits sans son autorisation. reproduced without the author's permission. ln compliance with the Canadian Conformément à la loi canadienne Privacy Act some supporting sur la protection de la vie privée, forms may have been removed quelques formulaires secondaires from this thesis. ont été enlevés de cette thèse. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires in the document page count, aient inclus dans la pagination, their removal does not represent il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. any loss of content from the thesis. ••• Canada ,~ Table of Contents l. Abstract 1. Introduction 1 II. Chapter One: The Museum Audio Guide 3 Instructing the Visitor, Conditioning the Subject l. Culturing Functions of the Museum 5 Il. Class Performance Il 111. Limited Levels of Control 15 iv. Continuous Relations 21 v. Designing the Exhibition 25 VI. Body Technique 28 Vll. Sound Space 35 Vlll. The Accelerated Subject 41 III. Chapter Two: The Audio Guide Undone 44 Sound and Reaction in Cardiff' s Missing Voice and Conspiracy Theory i. Sound Matters 45 ii. The Audio Walk: audio guide + soundscape 46 111. Soundwalk: the soundscape in lived space 49 iv. Automatic Action: listening and hearing 52 v. Missing Voice: indexical sound, indexing experience 55 VI. Binaural Recording 57 vii. Conspiracy Theory: the space for surprise 59 viii. Back Space 63 IX. Urban Trajectories: can walking reinvent the city? 70 x. Actualized Virtuality 73 IV. Chapter Three: Momentous Movement 78 The Perceived Interval in the Audio Walk l. Pre-conscious, Pre-individu al 79 ii. Sound Consciousness 80 111. The Ma( ve )ment 84 iv. Ready Constellations, Affirmative Potentialities 87 V. Conclusion 91 VI. Bibliography 96 • 1. Abstract This thesis is an examination of sound and lived space in Janet Cardiff's audio walks, Missing Voice, and Conspiracy Theory. Its aim is to contextualize Cardiff's project in terms of how it reverses the logic of the convention al museum audio guide; taking the user on an unexpected tour of the back spaces, and by providing an audio track of soundscapes which are not about the art exhibition but rather point to the social relations constituted in each audio walk environment. Paradoxically, it is the non-synchronous elements of Cardiff's audio walks that point to the embedded nature of expectations produced by body technique. It is through the disjunction of the experiential moment between sensorial input and our awareness of it (an incongruent relationship between what is expected and what is experienced) that, Gilles Deleuze' s concept of the pre individual is actualized for the lived body. The actualized pre-indviduallies at the core of an analysis, of how Cardiff's audio walk transgresses the limits of a single art work and reopens living as an emergence for the interconnectedness of the actual-virtual. Cette thèse étudie le son et l'espace vécu dans les promenades auditives de Janet Cardiff «Missing Voice» et «Conspiracy Theory». L'objectif est de contextualiser le projet de Cardiff dans des termes de subversion du traditionnel guide audio du musée. D'une part, Cardiff entraîne le visiteur sur un chemin inconnu, dans les coulisses du musée, et d'autre part elle propose un paysage auditif qui tend à montrer comment la perception s'appuie sur une relation congruente entre ce qui est vu et ce qui est entendu à un moment donné. Paradoxalement, c'est la non-congruence des divers éléments des promenades audio de Cardiff qui renvoie à la nature liée des attentes générées par la technique du corps. C'est au travers de la séparation de l'instant expérienciel en un stimulus et la prise de conscience de celui-ci que Gilles Deleuze actualise le concept de pré-individuel pour le corps sentant. 11 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 1 wish to express gratitude and appreciation to my thesis supervisor, Jonathan Sterne, who se enthusiasm for my project helped animate my imagination. Thank you to Cornelius Borck for his helpful recommended readings. Tom Lamarre and Anne McKnight have both inspired and challenged me throughout the years. AlI of my truly memorable learning experiences in school, 1 owe to them. 1 am very grateful to my supportive family - especially my parents who provided me with the privilege of education and the encouragement to pursue it this far. FinalIy, this work in-progress would have been unfathomable without the support and good cheer of my spirited alIy, Jarrett. 111 1. Introduction ln this thesis 1 map the significance of sound artist Janet Cardiff's audio walks. 1 examine two 'walks', Conspiracy Theory, and Missing Voice, which guide individual users through 'alternative' tours of the in-between spaces of the museum, and away from the art exhibitions themselves. Cardiff employs and exploits a simple technology, a pers on al audio device with audio tracks containing the artist' s directions for movement and, soundscapes, creating a complex augmented reality for the user. The audio walk's complexities are brought about by a virtual dimension that offsets the user' s perception of a scene, which the user sees unfold in front of her as it is being described by a narrator' s voice in the audio track. Cardiff' s audio walk makes chaotic a museum experience that museum audio guides attempt to organize. The audio walk operates by creating a slight disjunction between what the user he ars and sees, and expects and experiences from her environment and herself. While most virtual realities are about creating an alternate reality, Cardiff's audio walk creates an altered reality, and another level of the 'actual', by using sounds that the user would often hear in a given environ ment. The audio walk's success is determined by its ability to surprise the user, an effect which is only possible because the user already has a sense of 'knowing what to expect' or habitus. Cardiff's intervention deliberately destabilizes the museum machinery for its user while also complicating the status of the perceiving individu al. ln the first chapter, 1 conduct an overview of criticalliterature on museums and consider the use of the conventional museum audio guide, a device that, in part, provides the artistic inspiration for Cardiff' s walk. 1 argue that the museum audio guide works alongside other exhibition rhetoric to fulfill the museum's educational and aesthetic aims, 1 and operates on different levels: narration (scripting), voice (phonogeny), movement (walk-act), and space (anonymous and private). The audio guide acts as an educationai 'accelerant' that erases the need for its beholder to discover what she sees and hears on her own. The audio guide aiso conditions physical behavior, by encouraging smooth and processional movement through the bureaucratie space, while aiming the behoider' s intellectuai gaze at works of art. In the second chapter, l examine Cardiff' s audio waIk, a diverging version of the museum's guide, that creates physicai and experientially jarring routes into the 'back spaces' in and around the confines of the museum space, where sounds from the recorded audio track are complicatedly interwoven with the user' s perception of her environ ment. Cardiff disorients Iisteners by using 'typical' perception of sounds to present faise eues. In effect, Cardiff displaces what is written onto the body and onto spaces and places in general: the misplaced or out-of place has an overall effect of disorienting displacement in the crisis that is the formation of the museum. Finally, in the third chapter l attempt to read Cardiff's walks in terms of ontogenesis, or the ontology of becoming. l explore the smallest aspect of the user' s experience; an instant in which the user's body reacts to sensory stimulus before she is made aware of it. largue that this 'moment of movement' presents itself as embodied, as action before awareness and preceding individuation and consciousness. l propose that, in this respect, we are always la te for consciousness and, in this pre-conscious corporeality, the user actualizes the coherence of non-linear regions of living. 2 Chapter One: The Museum Audio Guide Instructing the Visitor, Conditioning the Subject In looking at the museum on the one hand and its audio guide on the other, it is difficult to clearly state which entity strictly provides the machinery, and which entity structures the machinery.

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