Alvin Lucier (1931–2021) was an American composer and a key figure in experimental music and sound art. His work focuses on the physical properties of sound, acoustic phenomena, the resonance of space, and the relationship between sound, the body, and technology. He is the author of landmark works of the twentieth century that shift attention away from musical material and toward the act of listening itself. In the 1980s, he began composing pieces for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, and orchestra.

Fero Király is a musician, coder, and educator with a fondness for interdisciplinary projects. He is co-founder of the JAMA project and the ooo association. Though best known as a pianist specializing in contemporary classical music – performing works by Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and others – and as a member of Cluster ensemble, his solo practice turns toward digital technologies, sound art, and various hybrid art forms.

Eva Vozárová is a dramaturge, performer, researcher, and freelance cultural manager. She is co-founder of the artistic ooo association and the JAMA project, both rooted in the legacy of Milan Adamčiak, where she develops curatorial and original work across sound art and intermedia.

This legendary sound art piece by American composer Alvin Lucier, created in 1969, is considered one of the seminal works of electroacoustic experimentation. The piece consists of a live recitation of a text, which is recorded, played back into the room, and then re-recorded. This process is repeated; the articulation of human speech gradually fades away, the words become unintelligible, and are replaced by the pure resonant harmonies and tones of the room. Thanks to the unique resonant characteristics of each room in which I Am Sitting in a Room is performed, the result always differs from previous performances.

I Am Sitting in a Room explores the question of to what extent music is created by musicians, instruments, or the space in which the music takes place. It is an absolute expression of the uniqueness of the space where the audience and the performer meet.

The work was first performed at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1970.

40 min.
1969