by Mike Telin

On Friday, February 19 at 7:00 pm in St. John’s Episcopal Church in Ohio City’s Hingetown neighborhood, the Syndicate for The New Arts will present their own rendition of Alvin Lucier’s classic of minimal tape music, I am Sitting in a Room. The evening will also launch the Syndicate’s residency at the Church in partnership with St. John’s Institute.

First performed in 1969, the work featured Lucier recording himself reciting this text:

I am sitting in a room, different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I’m going to play it back into the room again and again until any semblance of my speech with perhaps the exception of rhythm is destroyed. What you will hear, then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the room articulated by speech. I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have.

The recording was then played back into the room and re-recorded, a process that was repeated until the words became unintelligible and were gradually replaced by the pure harmonies of the room. [Read more…]