Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller's "The Murder of Crows" is a surrealistic sound installation inspired in part by Goya's famous etching "The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters." This hallucinatory work depicts a man asleep with owls and bats swooping menacingly around his head; Cardiff and Miller's title also refers to the habit among crows of flocking to a dead crow and cawing collectively, often for over a day, in a "crow funeral." The installation is composed of 98 speakers that visually mimic the flocking crows and issue both ambient and musical sounds, and a desk (mimicing Goya) with a megaphone from which Cardiff's voice relays a series of dreams. This artist's book account of the project--as well as selected earlier projects--includes documents, interviews with the artists, ornithological and literary texts referring to crows, plus a DVD and 3-D reproductions with glasses.
Credits:
Compositions
Lightness And Weight by Freida Abtan »
Traditional Tibetan Prayer performed by the Nuns from Thrangu Tara Abbey, Kathmandu, Nepal »
Bad Foot March by Tilman Ritter, Orion Miller, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller »
The Sacred War, words: Vasily Lebedev-Kumach, music: Aleksandr Aleksandrov »
Murder of Crows Aria, music: Tilman Ritter words: Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller »
Dread by Tilman Ritter »
Crows Did Fly (Kathmandu Lullaby) by George Bures Miller
All orchestral arrangements by Tilman Ritter, performed by Deutsches Film Orchester Babelsberg, conducted by Günter Joseck.
Choir conducted by Viktor Skriptchenko (»Sacred War«) and Tilman Ritter (»Aria«).
Guitars: Orion Miller, Jeff Person, Titus Maderlechner
Bass: Orissa Miller
Drums: Titus Maderlechner
Piano: Tilman Ritter
Additional Orchestration: Thomas Stöwer
Singers: Michael Mueller, Sophia Brickwell, Ana Pinto, Anna Retczak, Alexander Steinbrecher, Urmas Pevgonen, Sergej Prjahin, Sergej Shafranovich, Valerij Pysarenko, Dmitri Plotnikov, Nikolaj Pavlenko, Andrej Malynk
Recording, mixing and sound design: Titus Maderlechner
Installation Supervisor: Carlo Crovato
Speaker stand construction: Mick Harms
www.cardiffmiller.com
© 2008 Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller