I Am Sitting In A Room

Steven Connor talks about the voice as an "organ of listening as well as of transmission"; the voice , "like flypaper, gathers things along the way" and picks up "lilts, leanings, aches, eccentricities, accents". Connor attempts to illustrate this principle of the voice becoming 'mixed' by recalling Alvin Lucier’s "I Am Sitting In A Room" (1969):

"As the voice is played, recorded, re-played and re-recorded, the voice and the room blend. By iteratively enhancing the resonant frequencies of the room, Lucier manages to let us hear the sound of how the room listens to the voice. What emerges is a new voice, an extraordinary, literally unheard of ‘mixed body’, the body of the voice as it always anyway, inaudibly is, amid things."

A co-mingling occurs, and "inundated by its own room-tone, the voice ends up ventriloquising the room." I love this thought.