The Carnie, 2010 (3.5 minutes)

Please note; The Carnie, 40 Part Motet, and Storm Room will play one after the other. If no artwork is playing, the whole sequence is started by pressing the button to the right of Carnie.

This piece combines the artists’ interests in spectacle, narrative, and sculptural sound. A small children’s’ carousel is activated by a start button. It grinds slowly up to speed, while lights and music emanate from the structure and moving shadows are cast onto the walls. Freida Abtan’s score is overlayed with sound effects, children reciting nursery rhymes, and the Carnie himself making up some of his own. The results transform the carnival ride into a layered, evocative, and perhaps scary encounter.

Credits
Composer: Freida Abtan “The Works and Days of Hands”
Sound Design: Titus Maderlechner
Construction: Eric Fagervik, Jeff Person, Robyn Moody, Carlo Crovato
Leather work: Sherrie De Boer
Voices: Aradhana Cardiff Miller, George Bures Miller

Excerpt from Art in Review-Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller at Luhring Augustine, By Ken Johnson, The New York Times, April 1, 2010

“Few artists work with sound more inventively and with a cannier sense of theater than Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller. The main attraction here is “The Carnie,” a carousel in a dark room that looks and sounds like something you’d encounter in a “Twilight Zone” episode. In addition to Disney-esque plastic riding figures including a giraffe, a deer, a cow and a frighteningly animated crescent moon it has an arched, vertical framework dotted by blinking lights from which effigies of children dangle like angels. It is also outfitted with a drum kit that plays itself. As the whole merry-go-round revolves, speakers broadcast ominous, cacophonous modern music by the electronic composer Freida Abtan.”