I Am Sitting in a Room
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice, and I am going to play it back into the room again and again, until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves, so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed. What you will hear, then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the room, articulated by speech. I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have." --I Am Sitting in a Room (1969) by Alvin Lucier |
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I Am Sitting in a Room is a sound art piece composed in 1969 and one of composer Alvin Lucier's best known works.
The piece features Lucier recording himself narrating a text, and then playing the tape recording back into the room, re-recording it. The new recording is then played back and re-recorded, and this process is repeated. Due to the room's particular size and geometry, certain frequencies of the recording are emphasized while others are attenuated. Eventually the words become unintelligible, replaced by the characteristic resonant frequencies of the room itself.
In his book on the origins of minimalism, Edward Strickland wrote that "In its repetition and limited means, I am sitting in a room ranks with the finest achievements of Minimal tape music. Furthermore, in its ambient conversion of speech modules into drone frequencies, it unites the two principal structural components of Minimal music in general."
Pages linking in 2021
Formant, Howl, Process music, Electroacoustic music, Paul Morley, Generation loss, Words and Music: A History of Pop in the Shape of a City, Stuttering in popular culture, Ashes Grammar
See also
- Room
- Music on a Long Thin Wire: Lucier composition also based on resonance.
- The Disintegration Loops
