Saturday 14 January 2012

Janet Cardiff - The Missing Voice

(Case Study B)
Stranger in a strange city


"Sometimes I don't really know what the stories in my walks are about. Mostly they are a response to the location, almost as if the site becomes a Rorschach test that I am interpreting. For me The Missing Voice was partly a response to living in a large city like London for a while, reading about its history in quiet libraries, seeing newspaper headlines as I walked by the news stands, overhearing gossip, and being a lone person getting lost amongst the masses."

I had attempted to do a similar exercise to Janet Cardiff, before I had listened to this piece, making binaural recordings in Poundland for example, giving directions and descriging what I saw. Listening back to the sounds however, I found that my voice was hardly distinguishable from the backgound sounds as I had felt rather self-concious at the time, talking about people around me. I find that Janet Cardiff's voice has so much more clarity, so much so that at times it feels like her voice has become your inner voice. The audio clip below, is a good example of this:

Dreams of Darkness by The Confusion Of Tongues

There is something about the next audio clip (Part-1, 9:45), which somehow reminds me of Vito Acconci's following piece from 1969:

It's like you're invisible by The Confusion Of Tongues

Vito Acconci - Following Piece (1969)

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