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    Alvin Lucier's Natural Resonant Frequencies

    Uploaded by

    Kimberly Sutton
    A short, whimsical essay based on the text of Alvin Lucier's I am Sitting in a Room by sound artist Kimberly A. Sutton.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Alvin Lucier's Natural Resonant Frequencies

    Uploaded by

    Kimberly Sutton
    207 views3 pages
    A short, whimsical essay based on the text of Alvin Lucier's I am Sitting in a Room by sound artist Kimberly A. Sutton.

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    © © All Rights Reserved

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    PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

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    A short, whimsical essay based on the text of Alvin Lucier's I am Sitting in a Room by sound artist Kimberly A. Sutton.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    207 views3 pages

    Alvin Lucier's Natural Resonant Frequencies

    Uploaded by

    Kimberly Sutton
    A short, whimsical essay based on the text of Alvin Lucier's I am Sitting in a Room by sound artist Kimberly A. Sutton.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 3

    Alvin Lucier's natural resonant frequencies

    I am sitting in a room, different from the one you are in now.


    I am writing on this page, trying to articulate my thoughts on Alvin
    Lucier. Also, I suppose, trying to communicate the basic fact implied
    by the existence of any recording, on stone or paper or magnetic
    tape--that another present existed, and this was made then, and
    there.
    I am sitting in a room, different from the one you are in now.
    I am writing on this page, trying to articulate my thoughts on Alvin
    Lucier. Writing the phrase, and the name Lucier, ghost fragments of
    silvery undulating pure resonance suggest themselves to my ear, and
    goose bumps rise up on my arm. Darkness, and space, and echoes, and
    silvery Lucier bubbles up, just from writing the phrase. I regard
    this not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as
    evidence of a neural recording of my intense physical and emotional
    reaction to Alvin Lucier's
    I am sitting in a room, different from the one you are in now.
    I am writing on this page, trying to articulate my thoughts on Lucier.
    I am recording my thoughts, articulated by speech, with the hope they
    will reinforce themselves and gain some resonance. Perhaps if I do
    this, again and again, and every time my mind wanders I simply start
    over...

    I am sitting in a room, different from the one you are in now.


    I am recording my thoughts, articulated by speech, about Alvin
    Lucier. I am trying to write them down, again and again, hoping their
    natural resonant frequencies reinforce themselves, and all semblance
    of my speech, leaving pure forms of thought, is destroyed. What you
    will have then, will not be a physical fact, but a way to smooth over
    the differences between thought and speech, between right now in my
    head and the moment you read this in yours.
    I am sitting in a room, different from the one you are in now.
    I am recording my thoughts, articulated by speech, about Alvin
    Lucier. I am growing bored of this process, and simply want to tell
    you: do this live, in the room you where are, right now. Record the
    sound of your speaking voice and play it back into the room, again
    and again, until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce
    themselves so that any semblance of your speech is destroyed. It is
    different from understanding the process and hearing the recording.
    As a demonstration of a physical fact, the room comes alive around
    you, tuning you to the internal logic of its existence.
    I am sitting in a room, different from the one you are in now.
    I am recording my thoughts, articulated by speech, about Alvin
    Lucier. Once I breathed life into a large globe, exhaling once and
    then hearing the globe inhale, again and again, reinforcing its
    natural resonant frequencies until the breath became its own.

    Squashes also work well, coming to life with a chorus of resonances


    animating spongy flesh.
    I am sitting in a room, different from the one you are in now.
    I am recording my thoughts, articulated by speech, about Alvin
    Lucier. James Fei once told me that Lucier would run the other
    direction if I suggested his works had anything to do with Marx. When
    I met Alvin Lucier at Mills I asked him about the importance of the
    text to I am Sitting in a Room. He couldn't remember the name of the
    dancer he borrowed the idea from, the idea of literally describing
    what you are doing as you are doing it. Ill always remember his name,
    and his turtleneck, so perhaps it is ok that I borrow his process
    for extracting resonant frequencies to my own Marxist ends. The
    spongy squash chorus sounds best driven by the sound of the grumbly
    tractor driven by the human smoothing out any irregularities in the
    land- a different land from the one you are in now- a land labored
    over again and again until man reinforces nature and any semblance
    of alienated labor is destroyed; and a squash sings of the hand that
    made it, the hand that feeds you that you have never seen, the labor
    immanent to its spongy flesh, its natural resonant frequencies the
    silvery transcendence of commodity fetishization.

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