The Project
Welcome to the digital companion to my master's thesis, "Sound and Documentary in Cardiff and Miller's 'Pandemonium,'" completed spring 2015 in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at the University of Maryland, College Park. At the heart of my project is the temporary, site-specific sound installation Pandemonium, which occupied the Eastern State Penitentiary historic site in Philadelphia from 2005 through 2007.
The primary purpose of this site is to present my research on sound art in a format that facilitates listening as well as looking and offers an informal and flexible reading experience. It will evolve to incorporate future research and to address any suggestions or observations submitted by users. I welcome your critical feedback!
This project was conceived in three chapters. The first provides an overview of the artwork and its context at the Eastern State Penitentiary, the oeuvre of its makers Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, and its existing critical literature. The second explores its relationship to sound art and the third to documentary-related practices in contemporary art. In this digital version, I've loosened the structure into shorter, thematic sections. The path below mirrors the sequence in which they were originally written to appear though they could just as well be read independently or in any order.