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Listening Report: Alvin Lucier

 

I can really hear how much Cage has influenced Lucier in his life. Especially the teapot on the piano piece heavily leans onto John Cage’s works. Of course, Alvin Lucier experimented further as well. His piece "I Am Sitting in A Room" was very interesting to listen to. We listened to the whole thing in class, and I have to say, by the end, my ears were ringing from all the screeching sounds.

 

Now, that might have been because of the speakers in the room. When I listened to it again at home with my headphones, it wasn’t so bad. Now that I could actually concentrate on the words being said and experience the meaning behind them, I find it really fascinating. On the track, Lucier says that everything except rhythm is destroyed. And that's exactly what happens. With every loop of the sound being played back into the room and recorded again, the speech in the empty room becomes more and more fluent – literally. So, as his stutter slowly fades into the waves of high and low tones. About halfway into the recording, I closed my eyes, and the sound almost made its way through my head in waves. At least that show I imagined it.

 

By then I had heard the text enough times to know what he was saying, and in class, I actually read over the text throughout the whole track. Maybe that was a mistake, though. Because looking back at it now, I always knew what each swell of the sound meant and always saw it as that: the words (even if I couldn’t hear them clearly anymore). When the actual aim of this experiment was to experience how the sound changed and what difference it made or how it made me feel different.

 

Luckily, I listened to it again, as I already said, without reading the text. And it really made me realize how trance-like the track becomes. It almost made me forget that I too was sitting in a room – different from the one he was in. And when it was over, and I opened my eyes again, I needed a minute to check back into reality.

 

I think it’s fascinating, though. And also, very impressive that he created something with such a great influence on the listener (given they are prepared to fall into this piece like I tried the second time). It was a crazy experience.

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