
Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture (FMCAC) and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) co-presented the California debut of Janet Cardiff’s immersive sound installation The Forty Part Motet.

Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) co-presented the California debut of Janet Cardiff’s immersive sound installation The Forty Part Motet. The Forty Part Motet was a 40-part choral performance of English composer, Thomas Tallis’s 16th-century composition Spem in Alium, sung by the Salisbury Cathedral Choir. The performance was played in a 14-minute loop that included 11 minutes of singing and three minutes of intermission.
Individually recorded parts were projected through 40 speakers arranged inward in an oval formation, which allowed visitors to walk throughout the installation, listening to individual voices along with the whole. Cardiff’s layering of voices created an emotionally evocative sound sculpture that feels intimate, even within a public space.
About the Artist: Cardiff lives in British Columbia where she works in collaboration with her partner George Bures Miller. The artist is internationally recognized for immersive multimedia works that create transcendent multisensory experiences and draw the viewer into often unsettling narratives. Cardiff and Miller’s work has been included in recent group exhibitions and biennales such as Soundscapes at The National Gallery, London, the 19th Biennale of Sydney in 2014, and dOCUMENTA (13).
From November 14, 2015 to January 18, 2016, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture (FMCAC) and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) co-presented the California debut of Janet Cardiff’s immersive sound installation The Forty Part Motet.
Janet Cardiff:
CardiffMiller.com
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