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 Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller's site-specific sound installation - Pandemonium - which occupied the Eastern State Penitentiary historic site in Philadelphia from 2005 through 2007. 

• Chapter 1 introduces the artwork, its site, its makers, and existing interpretations in print.
• Chapter 2 investigates Pandemonium's relationship to music and to sound art.
• Chapter 3 situates Pandemonium, and Cardiff's audio walk Words Drawn in Water (2005), in the trompe l'oeil realist tradition and in dialogue with documentary-related practices in contemporary art, and finally offers some conclusions.

Consult The Project page for a more thorough overview. Shorter thematic sections are nested within each chapter. Follow sequentially or peruse in any order. Content is linked to related material throughout. 

This site exists primarily because sound art deserves a format suited to listening as well as looking and reading. Its aim is also to offer an accessible, informal, and flexible experience of my research. It is, in other words, an experiment - an active and ongoing one - that will evolve in dialogue with users. I welcome your questions, suggestions, and critical feedback.