I Am Sitting in a Room

I Am Sitting in a Room is a sound art piece by the American composer and sound artist Alvin Lucier composed in 1969. The piece features Lucier recording himself narrating a text, and then playing the tape recording back into the room while 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 resonant frequencies are emphasized while others are attenuated. Eventually the words become unintelligible, replaced by the characteristic resonance of the room. In his book on the origins of minimalism, Edward Strickland wrote that "In its repetition and limited means, I Am Sitting in a Room ranks with the finest achievements of Minimal tape music. Furthermore, in its ambient conversion of speech modules into drone frequencies, it unites the two principal structural components of Minimal music in general."