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Sound and Documentary in Cardiff and Miller's Pandemonium Main Menu Welcome The Project Chapter 1: Pandemonium—Sensory Assault and Deprivation Chapter 2: Sound Art—Narrative and Noise Chapter 3: Documentary—“Waking the Dead” Conclusions: Pandemonium, Radical Proximity, and Protest Acknowledgments Bibliography All Media News + Updates

MIDI system and keyboards, Pandemonium.

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All Images Cecilia Wichmann
Contents of this tag:
1. Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller recording audio for Jena Walk (Memory Field), 2006 © Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller; Courtesy of the artists and Luhring Augustine, New York.
2. Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, The Killing Machine, 2007 © Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller; Courtesy of the artists and Luhring Augustine, New York.
3. Janet Cardiff, Words Drawn in Water, 2005 © Janet Cardiff.
4. Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Feedback, 2004 © Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller; Courtesy of the artists and Luhring Augustine, New York.
5. Kongorikishi (also known as Ni-o) Kamakura period, Japan, early 14th century. Wood. Freer Gallery of Art.
6. James McNeill Whistler, Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room, 1876–77. Freer Gallery of Art.
7. Matrix editor view, Pandemonium score.
8. 1830s Etching of Eastern State Penitentiary.
9. Eastern State Penitentiary south wall, 2014.
10. Cellblock Seven, Eastern State Penitentiary.
11. Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller listening to Pandemonium from Cellblock Seven's upper and lower galleries.
12. Google Map view of Eastern State Penitentiary, April 2015.
13. Cell restored to 1830s appearance, Eastern State Penitentiary.
14. Beater striking drawers, Pandemonium. Courtesy of Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site.
15. Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller listening to Pandemonium in Cellblock Seven.
16. Jeff Wall, Overpass, 2001.
17. Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller testing Pandemonium.
18. Selection of Pandemonium beaters in situ, Eastern State Penitentiary.
19. Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller testing Pandemonium.
20. Tresor, Berlin, 1991.
21. Janet Cardiff listening to Pandemonium in Cellblock Seven during the composition process.
22. Control room containing MIDI system, Pandemonium.
23. Beater striking lampshade, Pandemonium.
24. Cellblock Seven, view from balcony, Eastern State Penitentiary.
25. Le Corbusier, Philips Pavilion, Expo 1958. Photo by Wouter Hagens. WikiMedia Commons.
26. George Bures Miller and Carlos Crovato in the Pandemonium workshop.
27. Carlos Crovato assisting in the Pandemonium workshop.
28. Cell interior in abandoned state, Eastern State Penitentiary.
29. Jeff Wall, A man with a rifle, 2000.
30. Auguste Rodin, The Burghers of Calais (detail), 1884–1889 (cast 1953–1959).
31. Eastern State Penitentiary, 1920s
32. Richard Herrod, Janet Cardiff, and George Bures Miller in Cellblock Seven.
33. Masked prisoner in Eastern State Penitentiary, late 19th century.
34. MIDI system and keyboards, Pandemonium.
35. William Harnett, The Old Violin, 1886.
36. Plan of Eastern State Penitentiary existing structures as of 1993.
37. Richard Herrod assisting in the Pandemonium workshop.
38. John Haviland's plan for Eastern State Penitentiary as constructed, 1837.
39. MIDI and beater diagram from George Bures Miller's notebook, Pandemonium.
40. Titus Maderlechner and George Bures Miller preparing Pandemonium.
41. George Bures Miller in the Pandemonium production workshop across Fairmont Ave from the penitentiary.
42. George Bures Miller and Carlos Crovato preparing the Pandemonium system.
43. Janet Cardiff, The Forty Part Motet (A reworking of “Spem in Alium” by Thomas Tallis 1556), 2001 © Janet Cardiff; Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York. Johanniterkirche, Feldkirch, 2005. Photo: Markus Tretter. Janet Cardiff, The Forty Part Motet (A reworking of “Spem in Alium” by Thomas Tallis 1556), 2001 © Janet Cardiff; Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York. Johanniterkirche, Feldkirch, 2005. Photo: Markus Tretter. 40 loud speakers mounted on stands, placed in an oval, amplifiers, playback computer. Duration: 14 min. loop with 11 min. of music and 3 min. of intermission. Sung by Salisbury Cathedral Choir. Recording and Postproduction by SoundMoves. Edited by George Bures Miller. Produced by Field Art Projects. The Forty Part Motet by Janet Cardiff was originally produced by Field Art Projects with the Arts Council of England, Canada House, the Salisbury Festival and Salisbury Cathedral Choir, BALTIC Gateshead, The New Art Gallery Walsall, and the NOW Festival Nottingham.
44. Robert Smithson, Yucatan Mirror Displacements (1–9), 1969.
45. Keyboard controllers, Pandemonium.
46. Riot at Eastern State Penitentiary, September 1933. Courtesy of Temple University Libraries.
47. George Bures Miller and Carlos Crovato in Cellblock Seven, Eastern State Penitentiary.
48. Inventory from George Bures Miller's notebook, Pandemonium.
49. Waveform view of Pandemonium recording.
50. George Bures Miller and Richard Herrod installing Pandemonium, Cellblock Seven upper gallery.
51. Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller at Eastern State Penitentiary.
52. Carlos Crovato and George Bures Miller in Cellblock Seven.
53. Eastern State Penitentiary Protest, July 1970. Courtesy of Temple University Libraries.
54. Cellblock Seven, skylight. Eastern State Penitentiary.
55. Layout from George Bures Miller's notebook, Pandemonium.
56. Path along the National Mall. Janet Cardiff, Words Drawn in Water, 2005 © Janet Cardiff.
57. Eastern State Penitentiary Protest, July 1970. Courtesy of Temple University Libraries.
58. Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller composing Pandemonium at Eastern State Penitentiary.
59. Solenoid prototype, Pandemonium.
60. Cylindrical plaza and fountain designed by Gordon Bunshaft. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.
61. Smithson Crypt, Smithsonian Castle.
62. George Bures Miller and Janet Cardiff fine-tuning Pandemonium.
63. Fallout Shelter Sign, Eastern State Penitentiary.
64. Prototype for a solenoid casing
65. Curator Julie Courtney discusses Pandemonium at press event.
66. Pandemonium wires, Cellblock Seven.
67. Fallout Supplies Barrel, Eastern State Penitentiary.
68. George Bures Miller fabricating a solenoid prototype for the Pandemonium beaters.
69. Janet Cardiff and Tonmeister Titus Maderlechner, Eastern State Penitentiary.
70. Visitors to Eastern State Penitentiary listening to audio tour
71. Luigi Russolo, Ugo Piatti, and the Intonarumori, 1913.
72. Visitors at Pandemonium opening events.
73. Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller. Courtesy of Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site.
74. Tonmeister Titus Maderlechner composing Pandemonium.

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Sonic Force
Pandemonium performed a veritable hit parade of these representational strategies. Its episodic structure imitates programme music with allusive sounds that tell a riotous ghost story. At the same time, Pandemonium’s emphatic preference for the percussive and textural over the melodic and harmonic infuses the composition with noise that is obstinately musical. Following Russolo, Miller scaled percussive beats by relative pitch and built a mechanical instrument to administer their transmission. Pandemonium’s rumbling call-and-response politics evoked Rainey and Smith’s blues. Its all-percussion ensemble, textured with two dramatic glissandi, invoked Varèse, and its PianoDisc MIDI system referenced Antheil’s switchboards. Charged silences drew on Cage’s “all sound,” and a violent crescendo mimicked transgressive tactics from Debussy to Higgins to Hendrix to punk. Pandemonium’s found instruments referenced musique concrète and industrial noise rock’s counter-cultural salvage ethos. [136] Paradoxical for so acoustic a performance, Pandemonium’s pervasive sampling and MIDI control system managed to riff on electronic music as well.

Along with these noise-music tactics, Pandemonium appropriated their range of meaningful, affective propositions, from military-inflected violence to joyful congregation. After all, music fails to absorb noise absolutely into some abstract system that would evacuate its worldly, corporeal qualities. Even alongside its musical meanings, sound signifies dynamic process, iterative perceptual experiences, and variegation of movement. Sound propels ecstatic collectivity, violent threat, and their interface in the mobilized, rhythmic body, positing a generalized protest against systems that would use the body against itself, channeling its force in a way that would neutralize this expansive capacity for sensorial experience. [137] Militaristic imagery accompanied noise music from Italian futurism’s “poetics of shell shock . . . and war machines” to Afrofuturism’s “guerrilla . . . warrior-clans.” [138] So too has sound all along excited rhythmic sensual dance, magnetizing bodies and collectivizing their sensations. [139] These two interwoven themes of rave and riot, and their mutually entangled affects of arousal and aggression, rage and joy, infuse Pandemonium with “sonic force” as theorized by music theorist and producer Steve Goodman in his 2012 book Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear.

With sonic force, a concept Goodman adopts from the Black Audio Film Collective, Goodman demonstrates sound to be inseparable from its somatic functions. Sonic force denotes the ways in which sound is:
. . . both seductive and violent, abstract and physical . . . a phenomenon . . . [with] power to caress the skin, to immerse, to sooth, beckon, and heal, to modulate brain waves and massage the release of certain hormones within the body. [140]
Sonic force represents a continuum of sound’s potential, exceeding the boundaries of human hearing. At one pole, sound is deployed for “. . . the strategic aim of crowd dispersal, to the dissipation of a collective energy, to repulsion and dissolution of clusters, and to the individualization of the movement of bodies,” echoing Eastern State Penitentiary’s founding mission. [141] At the other pole, sound’s “objective is that of intensification, to the heightening of collective sensation, an attractive, almost magnetic, or vertical force, a force that sucks bodies in toward its source.” [142]

Rather than elevating one sonic trajectory over the other, Pandemonium spins them together as if spiraling threads along a single, curving amplitude—from sub-audible vibration to immersive eruption. Pandemonium’s looping repetitions are both semantic representations and concrete materializations of sonic force as matter’s roiling potential. In figuring this full spectrum, Pandemonium made one unequivocal statement against stilling the body. Pandemonium exposed as false those powers that would claim to discipline away the body's sensory relationships with a world that is ever in process.