Sitting in a Room (of Noise?)

Alvin Lucier’s work has the notion of combining music and meditation to provoke attentiveness. In his piece “Sitting in a Room”, Lucier records himself narrating his ‘lyrics’ and then playing the recording back to re-record said recording. Then the new recording is played back, and the cycle begins anew until the only sound left is that of the resonant frequencies of the room he is sitting in.

During our first listening in class of Alvin Lucier’s “Sitting in a Room”, the repetitions and their meditative effects slowly but surely brought me into a stage of trance. It was incredibly difficult to pay attention and stay focused until the end, and especially challenging to listen to the effects the re-recording of Lucier’s words had on the sound of his speech. There was a point where the resonant frequencies represented mainly the setup of the room and only a distorted sound image of Lucier’s words. At that point, those frequencies hurt my ears and what remained of my focus disappeared. It seemed more like disturbing noise rather than anything musical. However, his stutter had the role of a unique metronome – whenever the listeners lose themselves in the sound frequencies of the recordings, the rhythm of his stutter guides the ears and provides an overview of the ‘lyrics’ until the very end.

Furthermore, “Sitting in a Room” provoked nostalgic feelings of long-lost childhood memories from when the neighborhood’s children would come together to play with a tiny cassette recorder, recording and re-recording their speech or random sounds until there was nothing coherent left to hear. It was an amusing way to pass time, discovering new background noise that we would not have noticed otherwise and finding entertainment in overlapping different recordings to see who could identify certain sounds the longest. We used to do this for fun, as 4-5-year-olds, until our parents scolded us for trying to break the recorder. After having heard Lucier’s “Sitting in a Room” though, the presumption arises that the adults simply did not appreciate attentiveness to sound for its artistic and experimental components. Lucier's affinity to rediscovering places through sound would have thrived with these experiments.

Joking aside, although “Sitting in a Room” is an incredibly challenging piece to listen to, it is tremendously fascinating as well. The piece’s meditative effects, whether intended or not, challenge the listener to not only actively focus on its individual sounds and fight against the incoming trance, but also to question Lucier’s ulterior motives. It provokes active attentiveness and critical thinking.