HackerTube.dev

Alvin Lucier - I Am Sitting In A Room

TrilobiteJuice · 653.6K views · 2012-01-24 · 45:25

Open on YouTube ↗

If playback is restricted in your region, try opening the original video. Use Mark watched to add it to your marked videos.

Overview

Alvin Lucier's 1969 minimalist piece in which a spoken text is repeatedly played back and re-recorded in a room until the room's resonances replace the words. This is the 1981 Lovely Music recording.

On Hacker News

HN cites it as the canonical work behind repeated re-recording experiments, and a pivotal piece of minimalist music worth listening to patiently.

Recommended by 1 HN people across 1 months · HN mentions 2016–2023

Topics

Music performance & songsEveryday physics & science demos
Search by tags
alvin lucierminimalismroom acousticssound artresonance

What people said

frereubu · 2023-04 · Recommendation

I love the earlier, even more minimal pieces like Music With Changing Parts: [LINK] And I love the parallels to things like I Am Sitting In A Room by Alving Lucier: [VIDEO] (If you're not familiar with this piece, it might be worth reading about it first - [LINK] ) I hesitate to say this because it depends on your tastes, but I'd recommend setting aside the time to listen to these beginning to end if you can. You'll probably feel a bit fidgety for the first 10 / 15 minutes, but in my view it's really worth persevering because I find the payoffs are worth it.

Read the original HN comment ↗
austinjp · 2023-11 · Reference

A piece of sound art in which Alvin Lucier repeatedly played back and re-recorded his voice in a room, until his words became completely unintelligible, and only resonant frequencies of the room remained. It's a pivotal piece of minimalist music. Edit to add link to YouTube of the recording: [VIDEO]

Read the original HN comment ↗
kamiheku · 2022-12 · Reference

That could be a fun exercise, I'd imagine you might end up with something like "I Am Sitting In A Room" [0][1] [0] [LINK] [1] [VIDEO]

Read the original HN comment ↗

Sources

Video by TrilobiteJuice, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

HN summaries and labels may contain AI errors. HN dates refer to discussions, not video publication.

HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

Views, duration and playback status refresh separately from the published catalog. When an update fails, existing data remains visible.

Selection checks
  • SaaS & AI candidates: Topic keywords do not match
  • Editor-approved picks: Editorial review is required

Rule matches identify candidates. They do not guarantee video quality or financial results.

About the library and its sources