Genre Process | Language English | |
Composed 1969 (1969): Brandeis University Performed 1970 (1970): Guggenheim Museum Recorded 1969 (1969): Electronic Music Studio at Brandeis | ||
I am sitting in a room (1969) is one of composer Alvin Lucier's best known sound art works.
Contents
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. Since all rooms have characteristic resonance or formant frequencies (e.g. different between a large hall and a small room), the effect is that certain frequencies are emphasized as they resonate in the room, until eventually the words become unintelligible, replaced by the pure resonant harmonies and tones 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."
History and performances
Lucier was originally inspired to create I am sitting in a room after a colleague mentioned attending a lecture at MIT in which Amar Bose described how he tested characteristics of the loudspeakers he was developing by feeding back audio into them that they had produced in the first place and then was picked up via microphones.
The first recording of I am sitting in a room was made at the Electronic Music Studio at Brandeis University in 1969.
The first performance of the work was in 1970 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
A second, higher fidelity recording of I am sitting in a room lasting over 45 minutes was released in 1981.
More recent performances include one at MIT's "SEEING / SOUNDING / SENSING" symposium in September 2014.
Lucier specified that a performance need not use his text, and that the performance may be recorded in any room.
Full text
The text spoken by Lucier describes the process of the work, concluding with a reference to his own stuttering:
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.