Alvin Lucier’s ‘I am Sitting in a Room’ is a piece that draws out the characteristic resonance and formant frequencies of the room the piece is being recorded in. Lucier set up a microphone which he used to record a short piece of writing outlining what will be heard and the motivation for creating this piece onto a reel to reel. This recording is played back through speakers into the same room the audio was recorded in. The mic picks up the audio recording that has been played back from the reel to reel and the cycle repeats. Different frequencies are enhanced or decreased as they resonate in the room until eventually the original words become unintelligible. rooms have varying dimensions meaning each room has its own individual pure resonant tones and harmonies is it produces.

My piece follows a similar concept. Using my laptop I go to the online Locus Sonus sound map page and stream the audio picked up by my phone. This audio goes to an amp that plays back the sounds picked up by my phone’s mic. A short piece of writing is read aloud into my phone mic which is then streamed using the Locus Sonus app. The amp is positioned next to my phone mic meaning the mic picks up the audio played back from the amp. This creates a feedback loop with the message deteriorating until it is unintelligible.

Comparisons and Differences:

There are differences between my piece and ‘Sitting in my Room’. The resonance of the room is picked up by my phone’s mic and looped until all that can be heard is the natural resonance of the room. In my piece this happened unintentionally.

I originally intended that the audio would be destroyed through the compression and introduction of digital artefacts created through the reformatting of the raw audio into streaming friendly audio formats. It is still possible to hear this effect, with the addition of lower resolution audio every time the words I speak loop back. It is often overpowered by The effects of picking up the room’s resonance. Furthermore, Lucier chose when he wanted to play back his audio unlike in my piece, which will play back audio picked up by the microphone depending on however long it takes the audio to be streamed from my phone to my laptop. This means less time is taken for the words to devolve into the room’s resonance.

Another factor that affects the audio different to Lucier’s piece is the strength of internet connection and streaming server business. These both can cause buffering and sudden cuts in the audio where there is silence. These add an extra rhythmical layer to the drone that is produced as sudden cuts in the audio creates rhythms.