Alvin Lucier

 

Taking inspiration from scientific findings concerned with acoustic phenomena (such as resonance and reverberation) and combining them with concepts and ideas of attentivity, Alvin Lucier worked out unique pieces of sound art.  

In both pieces, “Sitting in a room” (1996) as well as “Nothing is Real” (1990) Lucier explicitly addresses concepts of space and architecture and with that puts much emphasis on the context in which the respective pieces appear. Additionally, the performative aspect of the work is emphasized and highlighted on the level of form as well as on the level of content.

 

Considering his approach on a formal level, Lucier uses the room in which (or with which in the case of the teapot) he operates as an instrument itself. He thereby not only addresses but uses the properties of the room (may it be a small space or a huge hall) and its interior design in order to produce unique location-specific strains. Thereby he declares the space in which the performer finds himself to be an essential and constitutive part of the piece´s essence and the audience´s listening experience.

In particular “Sitting in a room” explicitly addresses the properties of spacial surroundings on what could be called the level of content. Speaking of content, I aim to relate to the spoken word and the contentual information it comprises. The descriptive nature of what one might want to call the lyrics of “Sitting in a room” hints at a self-referential approach that is immanent to the final recording. Although, the words he spoke and recorded do on the surface seem no more than the object of constant repetition, they do in fact undergo constant changes and alternation, as there are fed back into an endless loop construction. With the passing of time and the ongoing repetition of feedback, the resonance of the room is further emphasized, while the speech loses its original context. Due to its length and the repetitive manner the spoken words manifest themselves as some sort of mantra that dominates the pieces even after the words themselves become unrecognizable and the rooms frequency set up and the unique sounds it produces shape the soundscape. Furthermore, the increasing concretion and final unintelligibility of the words calls for a focus of the audience´s attention, that is consequently not only drawn to the words itself, but the progressive charge of the pauses in between, which mirror the resonance and tones the room itself offers.