A. Lucier - the stillness of performance

 The first piece that I encountered Alvin Lucier's music was his Music For Solo Performer. The performer sits still on a chair and wearable devices capture the brain wave of the performer. The brain wave transfers to an electronic signal and makes sound on acoustic instruments. This is unique in that in most performances we see, the performer has all sorts of movements and gestures. (Also read my previous article and music for the deaf.)

Apart from his Music for Solo Performer, Lucier works a lot with sound installation e.g. Music On A Long Thin Wire, and manipulating sound samples e.g. I Am Sitting in a Room. The human gestures element is mostly erased which benefits the audience by focusing the movement of sound (air particle) and the movement (vibration) of the mechanical part.

In his installation, Music On A Long Thin Wire, the wire is extended across a large room, clamped to tables at both ends. The ends of the wire are connected to the loudspeaker terminals of a power amplifier placed under one of the tables. A sine wave oscillator is connected to the amplifier. By varying the frequency and loudness of the oscillator, a rich variety of slides, frequency shifts, audible beats. The special part of this installment is the string vibration is visible as the string is long and thin. It is not normal to see the vibration of string to produce sound.


His piece, I am sitting in a room, is a repeated process of narrating a text, and then plays the recording back into the room, re-recording it. The resonance of the space providing feedback blends with the original signal and gradually sound more and more away from the original text. The sound waves bounce back and forth in the space, the movement of air particles. The audiences don't only see the space and listen the space as well. 

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