Sound Art ~ Spring 2009

I don’t think I have heard such a heavenly sound in my life.

However, a couple weeks ago I was walking around at the sculpture garden and found a similar heavenly resonance coming row of trees with wind chimes in the branches. I’m glad to have found a similar sound, because that was an amazing sound and I’m sad that I probably won’t be able to hear sirens again. While the sounds in the garden were similar, there really isn’t anything that can replicate the resonant sound of the Sirens.

One reason why I loved the piece is because of its structuralist approach to sound-making. The overall sound was broken down into each individual tone, and the intricacy of the sound was emphasized. Also, I was able to understand a single sound on a more fundamental and complete level. The final combination of annoying sounds producing one beautiful sound was powerful to experience.

Also, I loved the piece because the sound was so alive. Because of the spinning sounds, the sound really seemed to be in constant flux, always alive, reacting, dynamic. The ability to visually see the sound physically in motion reinforced this understanding of the dynamic sound.

Posted by Broc Blegen at 9:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Pages 72 - 133 in Sound Art: Between Music, Between Categories- by Alan Licht - focuses on Environment and Soundscapes. Ideas of place and time, noise and scale were considered anew in the works described in this chapter.

As you read this chapter, reflect upon our current focus on embodied sound and post your description of the role of embodied experience as it relates to one of the sound works described in this chapter.

We will begin our class discussion with your observations when we meet on March 24th.

Posted by Diane Willow at 3:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I really enjoyed this piece...I couldn't tell what kind of place the sound made me feel I was in: it all depended on where I was standing in a particular moment. I found the sound in the far left side the most fascinating...like being deep under water. It would be sweet if Ray Lee had ten times as many speaker arm swinging contraptions and placed them all in some desolate field and played it in the dark. And perhaps then he could have some of the arms up really high over head like those creepy white windmills one may see dotting fields.

Posted by bosch035 at 10:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

1. Around cycle five, I began to hear a distinct resonant frequency at the end of Lucier's phrasing.
2. I lost count after cycle ten, but only became aware of this well after the fact; I believe my interest shifted from the articulation of Lucier's words over to what was merging (distorting, expanding, compressing?) into various tones that themselves were sharing something almost melodic?
3. I found it funny, toward the end of the recording, that I had managed to forget most of what Lucier had originally said, even though what he said was articulated many times.

Posted by ande8344 at 1:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

1. When I first heard the track on cycle three or four it became this eerie feeling of someone speaking to me through a metal tube that was getting longer and longer. The volume not decreasing but the words becoming muffled.

2. I found that around twelve I could no longer hear any words just the articulation of the beginning of words.

3. I thought the piece was a three part cycle of spoken words > sound based from articulation of the original word > a final single sound wave of the resonance of the room.

Posted by kraus268 at 1:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Three things I noted when listening:
1. At first, while I could still understand the words, my listening followed a certain pattern. At the beginning of each repetition, I would be surprised by how much his voice was colored by the new level of room tone, but by the end, I would be accustomed to it -- my ear would accept it as normal as long as I could still decipher the words.
2. Once the words stopped being intelligible, the room tone seemed to gradually converge at a certain pitch, which got more and more emphasized each time the phrase was repeated.
3. At some point, I noticed that the pitch I just mentioned stopped being so dominant, and the sound started to wash into more harmonics and "colors." Around this time, I realized that the pauses in Lucier's speech were starting to get filled in as well -- higher, more transparent sounds echoing the more saturated sounds of the spoken words...

Posted by Jonathan at 1:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I thought this piece was interesting because it gave life to the room.

Continue reading "i am sitting in a room - jared" »

Posted by Jared Nelson at 1:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

1) The second iteration of the speech is when I began to hear distinguishable tones emerging

2) The first use of the word "Room" was no longer distinguishable after the first few iterations

3) Near the end, several tones produced very strange, awkward chord

Posted by kane0136 at 1:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

the first notable moment for me was at about the forth cycle. At that point i began to notice a distortion in his voice. Although i could hear a bit of reverb in the first three cycles it wasn't until the fourth that it started to become overly apparent.

the second notable moment was at about the tenth cycle. At this point i had an idea on where it was going and what was going to happen. At this point it began to sound more like an instrument than a voice. It made me think of a wah wah pedal.

after that i let my self get lost in the sound as it grew more and more abstracted. Somewhere around the 3rd quarter of the piece i honestly lost some interest in it. The sounds became a bit obnoxious. my mind started to wonder. I wondered if these piece was an installation at some point.I thought about redundancy of repetition, and the break down of information as well as memory. About ten minutes before the end i got back into it. I found it interesting that even the silent parts in the beginning were now washed with sound

Posted by donov096 at 1:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Listening to Sitting in a Room made me think of death or the transition from life to death and how one exists, or the ways in which other cultures think the soul/spirit exists after death. During the first few repeats it sounded like he was in a tunnel getting further and further away. Later on as there was more feedback it sounded like the feedback from an amp when the volume is cranked up and the guitar gets too close.

Posted by bosch035 at 1:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Post your reflection as a series of 3 statements, each describing a distinct moment in your experience of listening to "I Am Sitting in a Room".

Continue reading ""I Am Sitting in a Room"" »

Posted by Diane Willow at 11:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)