Alvin Lucier. I Am Sitting in a Room. 1969. Sound art, performance.

Alvin Lucier’s I Am Sitting in a Room includes the recording of a brief monologue about the recording process that is subsequently played back into the room and re-recorded multiple times until, as Lucier says in the work the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed.” Also stated in the monologue is Lucier’s interest in smoothing out any irregularities with his stutter over multiple iterations of re-recording. While the iterative process momentarily produces flattened speech, it quickly exchanges legibility for a bellowing abstraction as the room largely listens and sings to itself. Each performance of the work culls from the inaudible architectural distances a collaborative portrait of emergent frequencies.