Sound and Documentary in Cardiff and Miller's PandemoniumMain MenuThe ProjectChapter 1: Pandemonium—Sensory Assault and DeprivationChapter 2: Sound Art—Narrative and NoiseChapter 3: Documentary—“Waking the Dead”Conclusions: Pandemonium, Radical Proximity, and ProtestAcknowledgmentsBibliographyAll MediaNews + UpdatesCecilia Wichmann570c894159ad998517c62537a60758b7099e0270
The Project
1media/17_Anthropomorphic beater_sized.jpgmedia/4_Cellblock seven (ground floor view, 2014).JPG2015-07-10T14:21:00-07:00Cecilia Wichmann570c894159ad998517c62537a60758b7099e0270554211plain2015-07-10T16:01:46-07:00Cecilia Wichmann570c894159ad998517c62537a60758b7099e0270From 2005 to 2007, Canadian artists Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller automated a live performance of simple robots striking furniture detritus and pipes in the cells of Eastern State Penitentiary, a Philadelphia prison that once specialized in isolation and silence. Oscillating between referential and abstract sounds, Pandemonium suspended percipients between narrative and noise.
So far scholars have investigated only the work’s narrative aspects. This projects examines Cardiff and Miller’s specific use of percussive sounds to position Pandemonium in dialogue with noise music, sound art, and documentary-related practices in contemporary art. Pandemonium’s representational sounds coalesce into a curious kind of concrete documentary that triggered a sense of radical proximity between the percipient’s body and the resonant environment of Eastern State Penitentiary. In doing so, it explored the potential for sensory relations and collectivity in a complex, contemporary world.
Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts 2015.