Reflecting on Sound Artist Alvin Lucier

From Christopher Burns wonderful little article and experiment based on Alvin Lucier's classic experiment/ sound piece, "I Am Sitting in a Room"

Here is an exerpt, for the entire article go HERE.

The score begins: "choose a room the musical qualities of which you would like to evoke." A text is then read and recorded in that room; the recording is played back through a loudspeaker, and the playback itself recorded; and the cycle of playback and recording is continued through a variable number of generations.

As the text is repeated over and over into the room, the acoustic properties of the room assert themselves. Echoes elongate and smear the speech, and the resonances of the room enhance some of the frequencies present, while others are eliminated. Gradually, the speech is transformed into music: the text becomes a complex weave of pitches, based upon the intersections of the recorded voice and the resonant frequencies of the room.