i am sitting in a room
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Alvin Lucier’s I am sitting in a room (1970) is a classic. Lucier takes something uniquely human, language/speech, and subjects it to technology, a simple tape recorder. A “good” tape recorder is something that in theory should record a sound exactly. But the tape recorder is a "flawed" human invention that does not record sound in it's exact form. Lucier amplifies this flaw, not to point out that it should be fixed, but rather to show us that the flaw in the recording device is actually what reveals the otherwise unperceivable natural resonance of a space. In his own words, he sees this activity not as demonstrating a physical fact, but more as a “way to su-sm- smooth out” any irregularities his speech might have (he had a speech impediment). On one hand, Lucier’s speech becomes less and less “human”, in that linguistically the words begin to lose their meaning. On the other hand, the sounds made using the tape recorder are becoming less and less technically accurate, showing the inherent human flaws in the technology. By the end of the piece, the technological and the human merge together and all that exists is the space, whose resonant frequencies are unperceivable until technology and human perception are combined.