Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller are internationally acclaimed installation and
sound artists. Their pioneering work was 1995's The Dark Pool, a room full of bric-abrac that made sounds as viewers passed by and interacted with it. This set the tone for subsequent work, playing with visitor expectation through through ambiguous objects and fragmented narratives. In addition to kinetic sculptures and sound installations, film is an important part of the work. Cardiff and Miller represented Canada at the 2001 Venice Biennale, where The Paradise Institute received a special jury prize, the first to be presented to Canadians at the Biennale. That same year, Cardiff debuted a solo work, The Forty Part Motet - a circle of 40 speakers, each a member of a choir singing Thomas Tallis' work spem in alium - a 1573 composition - at various venues, including at PS1 in New York. Cardiff is also known for 'soundwalks', commissioned site-specific audio tours, with evocative narratives. In 2011, Cardiff and Miller won the prestigious German Käthe Kollwitz Prize. In 2012, they participated in (d)OCUMENTA 13. Lost in the Memory Palace, a selected retrospective of their work, opened at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2013.