Hill Climbing

Sound plays an important role in the work of Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller (Canadian, b. 1957; 1960) whose video Hill Climbing (1999) tracks an unseen couple and their dog as they struggle to climb up a snowy hill. The layered, binaural soundtrack is heard through headphones, a device intended to mimic the sensation of experiencing voices and sounds resonating in one’s own head. As the couple stumbles and trudges along, the video loops and they never reach the summit, frustrating our desire to see what is over the horizon and to successfully imagine ourselves located within the image.