Janet Cardiff

After listening to her radio piece and her Whitechapel Gallery Project, I'd really love to take one of Janet Cardiff's walks. Even just sitting here, the recordings seemed so intimate and carefully pieced together. The narration made it feel like being in a movie, but that no one else will ever see. It was also very interesting because you could never really tell who the whisper voice was talking to. At first, it seemed as though he knew me personally and that he was sometimes looking out for me and sometimes stalking me. At one point, Janet actually answers him, though he still doesn't lose his ghostly presence.

I really noticed the three-level spatial structure, specifically with the ocean sounds. At first, I didn't even realize they were there because they were in the background. I felt that the voiceover became the middle ground because it was very obvious, however, I wasn't really that concious of it. I heard what she was saying, but I was paying attention to what she was pointing out (i.e. the water flowing from the broken pipe). She was able to create a fluidity of movement between the layers, especially with fading in and out of foreground sounds as we "walk away" from them. I was able to visualize everything around me, and build a map as I went along, but I think that the sense of place in time would be much more powerful if I were actually in that place. It would create a whole new layer of experience to look over at apparitions of the sounds because they are not visually there in the same time and place. I love the way she mixes real and sureal and is so successfully able to blend them together.