The Forty Part Motet de Janet Cardiff : la partition et l’art de l’équivoque

The Forty Part Motet (2001), an audiovisual installation by Canadian artist Janet Cardiff, consists in forty loudspeakers arranged in an oval; they play an audio loop of Spem in Alium, a well-known choral work by Thomas Tallis. The recording was devised so that each individual voice can be heard c...

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Auteur principal: Duplay, Mathieu
Format: Article ou chapitre numérique
Langue:Français
Publié: 2018
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Accès en ligne:Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM
Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM
id cairn-RFEA_153_0098
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spelling cairn-RFEA_153_0098RFEARevue française d’études américaines https://shs.cairn.info/revue-francaise-d-etudes-americaines-2017-4-page-98?lang=fr https://doi.org/10.3917/rfea.153.0098 The Forty Part Motet de Janet Cardiff : la partition et l’art de l’équivoque Duplay, Mathieu2018 arts plastiquesenregistrementJanet CardiffmusiquepartitionSpem in AliumThe Forty Part MotetThomas Tallisfre Revue française d’études américaines | 153 | 4 | 2018-05-03 | p. 98-111 | 0397-7870 RFEA_15359 The Forty Part Motet (2001), an audiovisual installation by Canadian artist Janet Cardiff, consists in forty loudspeakers arranged in an oval; they play an audio loop of Spem in Alium, a well-known choral work by Thomas Tallis. The recording was devised so that each individual voice can be heard coming from a single loudspeaker. Cardiff’s approach strikes the visitor as highly paradoxical: the artist states that her work is a reworking of Spem in Alium, although the famous composition appears to have been left entirely unchanged. The medium, rather than the piece itself, appears to be the focus of Cardiff’s attention; unlike Tallis’s original motet, The Forty Part Motet pertains equally to music and to the visual arts due to the towering presence of the forty human-sized loudspeakers. The point of Cardiff’s intervention is to emphasize the equivocal nature of the experience thus offered to the visitor: on the one hand, she suggests, by successfully challenging them, that the accepted distinctions between artistic disciplines are largely arbitrary; on the other hand, she shows that dissociation and distance are essential to art, which requires the dynamic interaction of related, but none the less distinct, dimensions of experience. Understood in the broadest possible sense, the concept of score appears to provide a convenient model of this complex situation: first, because it refers to a wide array of similar, but essentially different practices; and secondly, because the purpose of musical notation, increasingly used as a template by visual artists and art critics, is to link various semiotic systems perceived as different and complementary. Cairn free access
language Français
format Article ou chapitre numérique
building 0/Bibliothèque numérique/
1/Bibliothèque numérique/Cairn/
topic arts plastiques
enregistrement
Janet Cardiff
musique
partition
Spem in Alium
The Forty Part Motet
Thomas Tallis
spellingShingle arts plastiques
enregistrement
Janet Cardiff
musique
partition
Spem in Alium
The Forty Part Motet
Thomas Tallis
Duplay, Mathieu
The Forty Part Motet de Janet Cardiff : la partition et l’art de l’équivoque
topic_facet arts plastiques
enregistrement
Janet Cardiff
musique
partition
Spem in Alium
The Forty Part Motet
Thomas Tallis
description The Forty Part Motet (2001), an audiovisual installation by Canadian artist Janet Cardiff, consists in forty loudspeakers arranged in an oval; they play an audio loop of Spem in Alium, a well-known choral work by Thomas Tallis. The recording was devised so that each individual voice can be heard coming from a single loudspeaker. Cardiff’s approach strikes the visitor as highly paradoxical: the artist states that her work is a reworking of Spem in Alium, although the famous composition appears to have been left entirely unchanged. The medium, rather than the piece itself, appears to be the focus of Cardiff’s attention; unlike Tallis’s original motet, The Forty Part Motet pertains equally to music and to the visual arts due to the towering presence of the forty human-sized loudspeakers. The point of Cardiff’s intervention is to emphasize the equivocal nature of the experience thus offered to the visitor: on the one hand, she suggests, by successfully challenging them, that the accepted distinctions between artistic disciplines are largely arbitrary; on the other hand, she shows that dissociation and distance are essential to art, which requires the dynamic interaction of related, but none the less distinct, dimensions of experience. Understood in the broadest possible sense, the concept of score appears to provide a convenient model of this complex situation: first, because it refers to a wide array of similar, but essentially different practices; and secondly, because the purpose of musical notation, increasingly used as a template by visual artists and art critics, is to link various semiotic systems perceived as different and complementary.
author Duplay, Mathieu
author_facet Duplay, Mathieu
author_sort Duplay, Mathieu
title The Forty Part Motet de Janet Cardiff : la partition et l’art de l’équivoque
title_short The Forty Part Motet de Janet Cardiff : la partition et l’art de l’équivoque
title_full The Forty Part Motet de Janet Cardiff : la partition et l’art de l’équivoque
title_fullStr The Forty Part Motet de Janet Cardiff : la partition et l’art de l’équivoque
title_full_unstemmed The Forty Part Motet de Janet Cardiff : la partition et l’art de l’équivoque
title_sort forty part motet de janet cardiff : la partition et l’art de l’équivoque
publishDate 2018
container_title
container_issue
url https://ezproxy.univ-orleans.fr/login?url=https://shs.cairn.info/revue-francaise-d-etudes-americaines-2017-4-page-98?lang=fr
https://ezproxy.univ-orleans.fr/login?url=https://doi.org/10.3917/rfea.153.0098
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