Alvin Lucier's I am sitting in a room (1969) is an electroacoustic classic. The work, which questions the distinctions between speech and music, is conceptually rich, sonically beautiful, and is achieved with an extraordinary economy of means. The score begins: "choose a room the musical qualities of which you would like to evoke." A text is then read and recorded in that room; the recording is played back through a loudspeaker, and the playback itself recorded; and the cycle of playback and recording is continued through a variable number of generations.

As the text is repeated over and over into the room, the acoustic properties of the room assert themselves. Echoes elongate and smear the speech, and the resonances of the room enhance some of the frequencies present, while others are eliminated. Gradually, the speech is transformed into music: the text becomes a complex weave of pitches, based upon the intersections of the recorded voice and the resonant frequencies of the room.

By the end of the score, Lucier is explicitly licensing experiment with his basic process: "Make versions in which one recorded statement is recycled through many rooms. Make versions using one or more speakers of different languages in different rooms. Make versions in which, for each generation, the microphone is moved to different parts of the room or rooms. Make versions that can be performed in real time." Lucier's work invites realization in part because of the opportunity to experiment: different rooms, different texts, and different recording techniques all produce changes in the resulting tape or real-time performance.

In particular, "versions that can be performed in real time" offer opportunities which can only be implicit in fixed-media versions of the piece. A live realization tends to increase our sense of wonder at the piece; can this room, full of people sitting still and listening, have such an extraordinary musical effect? The performance space is activated and energized by the sonic process.

This activation continues throughout a live realization of the work. A recording like Lucier's can be made in relative acoustic isolation, so that the germinal reading of the text is the only sound to interact with the room and the recording media. In concert such isolation is not possible - a performance will inevitably involve extraneous noises (from the audience, from the hall, from the environment) of some sort. These noises may initially present themselves as distractions. But if they are captured by the recording equipment, they too will be incorporated into the process, and add their signature to the resulting music. The audience and the environment are part of the continuous process of transformation.

Next page >>

home | music | strictly Ballroom | realizations | research | teaching | contact