Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller at MACBA

Gone are the whispery, seductive voices we've come to expect from Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller. Also missing are the poetic, as if overheard, fragments of personal history. Instead, the soundtrack for the artists' new installation The Killing Machine consists of operatic techno music evoking the noise of sirens, gunfire and bombs.

It's a wartime soundtrack to accompany an execution chamber of a stage set--a wooden stall that contains a blanket strapped to an electric chair, a clear stand-in for a prisoner about to be executed. Above are moving, menacing robotic arms equipped with tiny spotlights, representing the wardens who have the power to snuff out the prisoner's life. And there's a big red button that you can push to start the whole thing, which lasts about five minutes and culminates in an explosion of light and sound. The result is the artists' most explicitly political work to date--a sci-fi enactment of the sadistic drama of carrying out a death sentence that also suggests wartime torture. It is the centerpiece of the Cardiff/Miller show at the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), "The Killing Machine and Other Stories," the biggest survey of their work since their 2001 retrospective at P.S.1 in New York.

With 10 works, the MACBA show has some old favorites, such as the full-scale pseudo-cinema of The Paradise Institute (2001), originally created for the Venice Biennale, and The Dark Pool (1995), a mock-up of an abandoned hotel interior that seems to be haunted by voices. But there is also a handful of newer works, including Opera for a Small Room (2005), a room filled with record players and albums of all kinds--the imaginary (or real?) haven of an imaginary (or real?) music collector. Although you cannot actually enter the space, the music from the room helps transport you there.

The same happens with The Killing Machine, where the sound surrounds and the robotic arms cast dramatic shadows on the museum walls so that viewers do feel trapped inside a chamber. Once again, Cardiff and Miller manage to involve and implicate us in a drama they create. And that has been their hallmark for many years: their fictions (and lifelike, binaural soundtracks) displace our realities without, however, suspending reality as consistently as the Hollywood movies that the artists explicitly and implicitly reference.

The only question is, does anyone really want to have this kind of profoundly disorienting experience not once but 10 times during a single visit to a museum? While a survey is wonderful for providing access to a wide range of works, seeing so many of these in rapid succession has a dizzying effect. If Cardiff and Miller are above all sound artists who specialize in dissolving the walls between art and life, their sounds simply need some space to breathe. Most artists make work that is more powerful when seen in the context of related pieces, but not Cardiff and Miller. This retrospective is best enjoyed when cut up into several visits.

["The Killing Machine and Other Stories" is currently on view at the Institut Mathildenhohe, Darmstadt, through Aug. 26, and travels to Miami Art Central, Nov. 8, 2007-Mar. 2, 2008.]

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