Thursday, April 1, 2010

Alvin Lucier - I am sitting in a room


Given the nature of this repetitive and monotonous listening exercise, I would say that it mostly tested your patience more than anything else. As Lucier’s voice becomes more garbled and disperses into the atmosphere of the room one has to appreciate the tedious fine-tuning that was required to bring this piece to fruition. After the 14th minute any sign of intelligible speech is lost and after the 17th minute Lucier’s voice is reminiscent to that of a robot. It sounds very industrial and metallic in nature and after the 34th minute it morphs into something closely resembling chiming bells.   

2 comments:

Brittany said...

I completely agree with you about testing your patience. I listened to the 45 minutes in the background while cleaning my house. I could never imagine being able to actually be Lucier and repeat the same thing over and over. Eventually it had to stop making sense to him. Have you ever said a word even just once and it stopped sounding like a word? Fork. Fork. Fork. How is that even supposed to be a word? It's so strange. That's what kept going through my head when I was listening to this.

Ed Salsberry said...

I agree. I couldn't sit through the whole thing. I agree with Brittany's thoughts as well about repeating a word until it just stops sounding like a word. I think I would go insane trying to do a project like Lucier did.