I'm trying to track down an audio/sound art piece from the 1960's (I think).

September 5, 2011 7:32 AM

I'm trying to track down an audio/sound art piece from the 1960's (I think).

I only have a vague recollection of this, so the details might be off:

The piece consisted of a man speaking in a recording studio; his voice was recorded and then played back in the recording studio; that playback was then recorded, and was subsequently played back in the studio, and the output of that was recorded again.

They repeated the process dozens (maybe hundreds?) of times, until ultimately the man's voice became muddled and unrecognizable due to the loss in fidelity from recording a recording of a recording of a recording [and on and on].

I want to say it was John Cage, but I can't pinpoint the name of the piece or any information on it.

posted by paulrockNJ to Media & Arts (4 answers total)

Best answer: I Am Sitting in a Room, by Alvin Lucier.
posted by in278s at 7:51 AM on September 5, 2011 [1 favorite]

Yep, Alvin Lucier. Here's a link to the performance.
posted by bill the tinman at 7:56 AM on September 5, 2011

Response by poster: That's the one, thanks in278s!
posted by paulrockNJ at 7:57 AM on September 5, 2011

I rather enjoy this reinterpretation, with YouTube's audio and video codecs taking the place of the room as the source of rerecording artifacts.
posted by pmugowsky at 12:44 AM on September 6, 2011