Alvin Lucier – I Am Sitting in a Room: A Genealogy of Noise

Everyone has experienced the sound of rooms, at least when moving and the new place is still lacking any kind of furniture. Still, it takes a while to understand what is special about “I Am Sitting in a Room.” At first sight, the only remarkable thing about this piece is – other than the supposed simplicity of melody, rhythm, and lyrics – the strange stutter Lucier shows here, which he for example did not show in his teapot video we watched in class. Also, the recording quality does seem to be somewhat subpar, with crackling noises all over it as if it was recorded long time ago with a low-quality microphone. The impression of a low-fi sound experience increases in the second round, as there is more static and less “fullness” to Lucier’s voice.

By the third (let’s call it) verse, “I Am Sitting in a Room” finally sounds like listening to oneself in a bad quality Zoom call with lots of feedback. This alienation of Lucier’s voice continues until not much is left of it. First, some fricatives and plosives of his speech take the stage, then overtones start appearing and intensifying continuously. Still, despite Lucier’s claim that this method will eliminate any “irregularities” of his speech, the stuttering (such as in “activity-y”) is still very much apparent, even though the speech is growing more and more incomprehensible, especially if the listener does not know the lyrics from before. Most if not all of the irregularities in Lucier’s speech actually rhythmic so that it is not imaginable to erase these without erasing all timbre and comprehensible language in them.

It all ends with mere crackling sounds. Before that, Lucier’s voice has turned into a high-frequency shrieking, but still with some consonants shining through now and then. Has he failed “destroying” the idiosyncratic features of his speech?

As I am at a loss when it comes to sthe musical qualities of this piece, I would henceforth like to ponder more the lyrics and the meaning behind this piece in general, as I am almost convinced that there is meaning and thought behind it. The banality of the lyrics, for instance, points out that the raw content is not important here but rather the means of making and processing sound. Calling the act of creating music simply an “activity” underlines this impression for me. Though “I Am Sitting in a Room” is indeed very much a “demonstration of a physical fact,” Lucier deflects attention from the plane of “fact” and focuses on “smoothing out irregularities” and “destroying” his speech – the latter aspect further confirming my impression that the form or shape of music is what Lucier is after.

So, what does the form of “I Am Sitting in a Room” tell us? Several explanations are thinkable, and there certainly is no way in disproving all of them. I, for my part, think that the gradual development of comprehensible and clear language to mere noise (if I may use this expression for this) carries the central significance here. But it is not that the result is only noise: It is only a different yet somewhat related form of Lucier’s speech. The end product is changed significantly from the original, but don’t musicians today use several forms of altering original input for specific kinds of sounds, some of which previous unwanted? Take, for example, electric guitar: In the beginning, guitar amplification only served to make the sound of a guitar louder, and distortion was to be avoided by any means. Nowadays, if asked how an electric guitar sounds like, most if not all people will describe a sound generated by overdriven amps and distortion effect pedals.

Thus, rather than a quite purposeless “demonstration of a physical fact,” Lucier offers a perspective of how “wanted” and “unwanted” sounds are closely related, and that definitions and perceptions of what is “music,” “sound,” and “noise” are blurry and in perpetual movement over time – and that even behind supposedly mindless creaking and crackling there might be art. If you will, Lucier has demonstrated one out of many genealogies of what we view as noise with “I Am Sitting in a Room.”