ABSTRACT
This chapter asserts that Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s audio and video Walks offer a distinctive interactive experience that shifts the perceptual horizon of the listener-participant in terms of presence and virtuality. The Walks feature sonic compositions using a range of ambient sounds interwoven with the central feature of the persona of ‘Janet’, whose coaxing voice guides the listener-participants through varied locales, exposing them to a multi-dimensional sensorial experience. The combined elements of the acousmatic voice, the technique of binaural sound recording, stereo headphones worn by the listener-participant and the act of shared perambulation give rise to a heightened sensorial perception dovetailing layers of virtual and actual phenomena that I am terming ‘sonic presence and virtual embodiment’. Focusing on The City of Forking Paths (2014) and the Alter Bahnhof Video Walk (2012), the chapter proposes that Cardiff and Bures Miller’s Walks embody a metaphysics of virtuality as a specific mode of interactivity and potential existence that inaugurates a nuanced and layered experience of perception, memory, embodiment and time.
