Janet Cardiff is a Canadian artist who works chiefly with sound and sound installations. She uses audio as a wrap around medium that encourages the stimulation of time and space as an experience, pushing its flexibility of interpretation by our senses. Most famously known for her ‘audio walks’, installations where the audience is positioned in an area either inclosed or in an outside environment (40 Part Motet positioned in a studio, whereas Forest was conducted outside in an actual forest), Cardiff surrounds her subjects with speakers that transmit sounds and create a transcending audio experience.

One of her most famous works, 40 Part Motet (2011), is an audio installation that comprises 40 speakers that surround the audience in a circumference. Each speaker projects audio of a singer, categorised into groups of soprano, mezzo-soprano, or alto. Together a virtual choir is created that sings mid 1500’s music, using the complexity of 40 different harmonies which create a 3D audio sculpture with a narrative you can feel emotionally through music. The music lasts for around 10 minutes until there is a quick interlude where the choir talks informally among one another. Cardiff purposely used this section of audio to create a humanised experience for the audience where you are subjected from the transcending nature of song to basic everyday ‘human stuff’. Once the interlude is concluded the choir prepares to sing once again, all taking a harmonised breathe before proceeding to their angelic sound.

Within Forest, A Thousand Years 2012, Cardiff positions her audience in an outside environment that is surrounded with trees and nature. Each speaker is placed up high within the tree’s branches that creates a filmic soundtrack that portrays a choir moving through the forest. The audio is also edited with sounds such as planes overhead and birds chirping. This makes the audience question what sound is real and what is not, thus questioning what they should be taking away from the installation’s experience and what is ‘really’ authentic.

Through audio installations Cardiff plays on her audiences’ need for emotional release. By overwhelming the sense of hearing she enhances the presence of different and sometimes forgotten spectrums of reality, complementing life’s spirituality.