The Project
From 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.
