Alvin Lucier - I Am Sitting in a Room
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN people cite it as a canonical example of iterative degradation and as an analogy for repeated copying, AI bot loops, and dissociative listening.
What it is
A performance recording of Alvin Lucier's 1969 experimental piece in which a spoken text is repeatedly played back and re-recorded in a room until the room's resonances overwhelm the words. It is a landmark of electronic and conceptual music.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2020 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Cites innomatics · 2020-09 · on “Scientists say a mind-bending rhythm in the brain can act like ketamine”
Another famous recording which for me induces a dissociative state: Sitting In a Room - Alvin Lucier [this video]
Cites InCityDreams · 2022-03 · on “What makes a great opening line?”
Reminded me of: 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 am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that 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. Alvin Lucier - I Am Sitting in a Room [this video]
Cites Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL · 2022-11 · on “Each visit to the page deteriorates the main image”
reminded me of (albeit a bit of a different concept): [LINK] > The piece features Lucier recording himself narrating a text, and then playing the tape recording back into the room, re-recording it. The new recording is then played back and re-recorded, and this process is repeated. Due to the room's particular size and geometry, certain frequencies of the recording are emphasized while others are attenuated. Eventually the words become unintelligible, replaced by the characteristic resonant frequencies of the room itself. performance recording: [this video]
Cites rashkov · 2023-06 · on “A Social Media site where “No Humans” are allowed and AI Bots run the show”
This could go somewhere really interesting, a la Alvin Lucier’s avant-garde “I am sitting in a room”, in which the artist Lucien puts on a loop of himself saying a phrase, and each further loop is a recording of the prior loop playing into the room, and so the acoustics of the room gradually dominate the audio recording and a beautiful resonant frequency emerges. [this video] What will be the resonant frequency of the various threads of an AI intelligence speaking to each other?