Alvin Lucier - "I am Sitting in a Room"

Alvin Lucier, an American composer was not a classical composer, but the one who liked experimenting with the sounds avoiding traditional musical elements. His works draw a lot of attention as well as different perceptions while listening to them. 

Sitting in the room and listening to Alvin Lucier’s recording first made me ask myself “What kind of room could that be if it is different from my room?”, but soon I realized it’s not really about the text itself, it's about the way he tries to perform it, he probably used the particular room in order to test his experiment. At the very beginning, the speech he was recording seemed like normal speech although the lyrics sounded like an announcement of something, something that is about to happen. The unexplainable part of it is the stuttering, but as the recording was going on it gave specific resonance to it, or perhaps Lucier wanted to accentuate the words in his speech such as “resonance”, “frequency”, “rhythm” etc. Later in the recording, when his speech is not much clear, these words can be more understood than the other ones which means they are of crucial importance to Lucier. 

However, while playing the recordings all over again, his tone loses its quality, it reminds me of old wire telephones when the connection was bad especially during some unstable times back then. First, you hear it clearly, and afterward, there are glassy echoes until nothing is heard, just an unpleasant sound is left. That makes me think that the vocal intensity is dynamic, being clear and loud, then still comprehensible, until the mere whisper is heard like it comes from the ocean.

Although Lucier was a champion when it comes to experimenting with the sounds and with “I am Sitting in a Room” he succeeded not only to create different types of resonances but also in some different points. In my case, I also understood how words can be meaningful after they are said many times, the words get lost, only the sound of the voice stays. Nonetheless, the point is to listen, for sometimes we can hear and recognize more without words themselves.