Janet Cardiff is just one half of a Canadian art power couple.

Cardiff teams up with her editor, collaborator, and romantic partner George Bures Miller. What’s even better is that they started out as art school sweethearts. Although Cardiff began as a printmaker and Miller as a painter, the pair transitioned to the realm of sound art. Since their initial collaboration more than thirty years ago, they have also delved into creating multimedia installations, creating their own films and even pieces that incorporate puppet shows, a la Alexander Calder’s Calder’s Circus.

The idea of being sound artists only makes sense once you experience one of their works. Many times, their works appear as a bunch of speakers grouped together, but the effects that they create are seriously otherworldly. Other times, the artists incorporate sound within a larger, more complex work. Many also depend on viewer interaction: there’s one piece that resembles an antique storeroom that triggers different sounds and messages as viewers walk by certain parts of the installation. If that’s not diabolically creepy, then I don’t know what is.

Cardiff is widely known for a type of work that she has termed “audio walks.” These audio walks are like audio guides, but for real life experiences. Sometimes outside, sometimes in a train station, and sometimes on the grounds of a museum, Cardiff’s carefully orchestrated sounds and flat narration alter how you experience what you think you might already be experiencing. This is some pretty meta stuff.

After the initial experiments with audio walks, the pair then decided to explore what they call “video walks.” Kudos to Cardiff and Miller for keeping up with the times. A video walk entails holding an iPhone or other small screen up to your face as you explore a space and trade an augmented reality for your own. As if people didn’t already always have their faces buried in their phones. But I guess this is a more productive and creative outlet than checking Facebook. For these walks, Miller handles the camera, but it’s supposed to be Cardiff’s point of view in the experience. To make the video walk totally convincing, Miller has taken to wearing women’s shoes to achieve the effect of being his wife Janet. The pair gets extremely particular, it once took them three weeks to find someone with shoes that sounded “just right” for one of their video walks.

Cardiff and Miller challenge all of your expectations, but (surprisingly) not in an eye-rolling way. Sound and sculpture slip into one another, and reality and imagination become one in what always promises to be a fanciful – and sometimes unsettling – experience.